The things I do for you
by Tora-Katana
Summary: Loki gets bored on Asgard, and lo and behold, finds himself banished together with Thor. He never dreamt the realm of Midgard could be so much fun. Pity that fun had the cruel tendency not to last…especially when Thor was involved as well as some small matters concerning unexpected parentage. Some possible pairings and staggering sarcasm.
1. Legally your fault

_A/N: I am completely new to the realm of Thor fandom, although quite the veteran in the realm of Devil May Cry. So I am just having a total stab here at something, and if you hate it I will take it down immediately, with feelings, bah! So please, please let me know what you guys think? As I will only continue if enough of you think it is worth it!_

**CH1 – Legally your fault**

Loki's sardonic POV.

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Truly, it had been an altogether innocent prank on his part. He sincerely did not intend to sabotage his big brother's even bigger day by the biggest prank of them all. Well, at least not entirely. Truthfully, he surprised even himself that he did not begrudge the almighty Thor his coronation. Not all that much, anyway.

True, he wanted to rule, but not over Asgard. It was a dreary place full of ungrateful Asgardians who would know not what fun was even if the said fun shone with the reflection of their golden armour right up their noble asses.

So, to make a sincere exception to necessity, and be utterly honest for once, his sabotage had been more aimed at distracting himself from his complete witty boredom as he had been standing there in plain view for hours to cheer his brother on, his face already hurting from the prolonged agony of joyful pretence.

The only other distraction worthy of an effort had been turning the wine he had been offered into a dripping goblet full of slithering eels. The slippery buggers were hastily dropped to the floor, the illusion shattered into a perfectly good and now spilled wine, the attendant having the decency to scream into his ear, to Loki's satisfying delight and partial deafness, but at the very same time as Thor had unfortunately exposed his wildly superior vocal skills, so it all had been for naught.

But Loki honestly couldn't have known that things would turn so damn intolerable, so damn fast, so damn thoroughly. It was not like he had not performed thousands of pranks and spells before. Well, he did need to practice somewhere, despite the general and unfathomable unwillingness of his humourless audience.

So when their father paused just before proclaiming Thor the rightfully unprepared king, Loki's unparalleled smirk of all evil and cunning had been carefully disguised under his perfected mask of genuine and worried surprise. He was truly impressed with himself as no one even thought this time to suspect him, no one pointed the usually immediately flung out finger, and it felt like a lifetime achievement, he swore it rightly did.

Almost tediously from that point on, it was only a necessary formality that Odin took them to the weapons vault deep below Asgard. As traditions went, the incident was all soon ignored and tucked under yet another unworthy, quickly dismissed attempt of meagre subordination, with an accompanying lightning fast dismissal of a total fail in Asgard's defences.

That was until Thor had gotten a big idea. And ideas born out of Thor's big head were generally - no - always connected to smashing everything in sight, since his hammer was a literal extension of his spinal cord, ending up as his detached brain that he loved to bash around so much.

That being said, when Thor decided to unashamedly discount Odin's strict command to ignore entirely the entire frosty event, and instead proclaim his right to cosmos-wide domination and uncontrolled demolition, Loki was not entirely inclined to stop him. The truth was, Loki had been seriously bored in Asgard for quite a while, all his magic now spent and either vehemently disregarded or frowned upon, hardly ever did anyone actually scream loudly in appreciation of his unusual talents or fled in utter chaos or panic. One word, desperately boring. Oh yes, two words.

So it came to Loki's mind that visiting another realm might not indeed be such a bad idea, considering he could use it to spread his sorcerous worth and test the boundaries of his abilities, sort of like expanding his far reaching ambitions the way they were obviously supposed to be, by his birth right. So, he might have even nudged his hammerhead of a brother in a very subtle and shrewd manner to go and do it by decidedly telling him not to go and do it. Well, Thor _was_ by a comparison to many a gigantic child, doing the opposite of what he was ever told.

Decision made on Thor's part, within an eye-blink of Loki's advice not to defy their father and bring about their likely horrible deaths, they set off for Jotunheim all the same. In tow were Lady Sif and the Warriors Three, who served as another peculiar extension of Thor's person, mostly providing an ego stroking facility as Thor had the compulsive obsessive disorder to show-off his seemingly unmatched might by excessive boasting, and for that he required their inherent limitations in battle and flight alike. Well, since they had not the hammer, who could blame them?

But moving along, when the five descended upon the cold and dark wastes of Jotunheim, the rumours of cold were but an understatement of a millennium as the ultimate freeze of all ages fell upon them. The apparent extent of devastation stared at them in bleak realization as the whole planet seemed to be a medley of jagged ice, uninviting and menacing, breaking off slowly and eerily to be set adrift into the black abyss of space gaping endlessly beyond.

What was more, the ruined city's inhabitants, once they decided to actually show their oddly lookalike dark blue faces, appeared even less up for a good laugh than Asgardians and that was saying too much already.

Loki promptly dismissed any appetite of claiming a right of rule against this realm. In all honesty, what was one to do there for fun? Juggle icicles and sculpt Thor's grinning face out of blackened ice? Or perhaps conjure anything so amusingly out of place in this black hole, only to watch the already frozen statues that inhabited this frighteningly uniform realm freeze a degree more?

Cutting a very long story a notch shorter, Loki's best trick of the day was turning blue while wrestling a Frost Giant without even remembering to use his magic, but he would think about that one later.

Things got finally complicated, when looking for answers was brusquely set aside as Thor was quite justly labelled a princess, well he was somewhat vain, blond and pretty, so who could argue on that point? But that left to other worrying ponderings, they smashed, offended, got offended, made a complete mess of things, ran like hell from a gigantic Jotunheim beast and then got busted by their father. Oh the shame of it all for getting caught. Not that Loki in fact did not help that particular turnaround, as Thor's rather premature and foolish coronation truly needed to be postponed for a very, very long time.

Thor was not ready for a throne, plain and simple. Even the said Jotunheim beast had shown more of a promise, opting for wise strategy as opposed to acting like a Bilchsteim in heat; horny and trampling everything in its path. And it was not that Loki did not try his very best to calm his brother down in his rambunctious raging, he truly did, but should Thor ever listen?

All that said, they were promptly whisked back to Asgard and admonished with the speech worthy in length of an entire generation in Asgardian terms. Truly, the Allfather had not talked so much in his entire life.

"You're a vain, greedy, cruel boy!" Odin's voice could freeze Jotunheim thrice over, with an even more impressive kind of frost.

"And you are an old man and a fool!" Thor lashed out blindly. Through the resulting deathly quiet a snowflake could have been heard descending on Laufey's giant head.

Loki's palm found its way to his face. Summoning his strength, he begged for his brother's mouth to speak no more, feeling himself move to his brother's rescue in mortified dread.

"A fool, yes! I was a fool to think you were ready," Odin found his voice suddenly, broken yet foreboding of something terrible and Loki could not help but ready himself to step between his father and brother, imploringly but proudly so.

It were not words though that had stopped him in that moment, it was a raging hiss from his father, a display of uncompromising, righteous fury he had not witnessed in the old man before. Only God could help Thor now, he knew, and not one of Lies.

"Thor Odinson... You have disobeyed the express command of your King. Through your arrogance and stupidity, you have opened these peaceful Realms and innocent lives to the horrors of war," the Allfather bellowed, saddened anger and authority whizzing out of his stern mouth.

Looking on with an ever so slight tug of overall impending doom in his gut, Loki considered whether in this instant, stupidity in fact outweighed arrogance or the other way around. He was content to settle on equal parts of each.

"You are unworthy of this Realm…unworthy of your title…" Odin was ever so great at speeches, and that was a quality not to trifle with.

Loki surrounded his quarrels to agree with that one.

"Unworthy of the loved ones you've betrayed."

A tad harsh. Loki felt not betrayed, at least not personally, in fact it turned out rather splendidly in his view?

"I hereby take from you your powers."

Please, do take his hammer! For all the good of the nine realms, and his sanity! Loki started to cheer mentally, his sadness stricken visage unbetraying of the relieved satisfaction as Mjolnir went flying from Thor's shaking hand and landed in Odin's unwavering grasp. Indeed, this was enough of a punishment, and now they should all go home, feast till sunrise and enjoy many a tankard of the great Asgardian ale.

"In the name of my father…"

Oh, there was more? Loki observed as Thor's armour and cloak were ripped off, piece by piece. Well, _do_ leave some clothes on him, for Odin's sake, and for everyone else's!

"...and of his father before..."

Loki hoped with all his heart that there were not many more mention-worthy predecessors, again for everyone's sake. And he _was_ getting rather thirsty.

"I cast you _both_ out!"

What? Oh. That one was unexpected.

And drizzled with such bitter irony, in so many, many ways, as Loki felt his royal ass squeezed like a juicy plum out of the uncomfortably narrow golden turret of the Bifrost. How appropriate that at last, the Allfather had actually treated both of his sons as true equals. Truly outstanding timing.

Loki had no idea until that very moment what having every atom of one's body elongated truly meant. Wherever he was being spat out to must have been by a thousand stretches farther than any place he'd been to before. It actually hurt, bad. Unless it wasn't the distance at all, it felt more like having his life-essence pulled out of him with a tremendous force. How lovely.

He realized then what had father done. Mortality. And mortality did not fare well in any stretches of space, not for a proud Prince of Asgard. If it was all the same to Odin, could Loki take that prank back now?

His bitter ponderings however were cut short when he finally hit the ground. The resulting darkness was so absolute that Loki thought at first they had been cast out all the way to Hell, or perhaps worse, to Svartalfheim, which was the more difficult way to pronounce Hell.

But not much later, after brushing the annoyingly clinging dust from his delicate derriere and stumbling blindly about, two bright streams of white light, not the red as had been rumoured to be the custom in Hell, came rushing towards him. Ready to greet the welcoming royal guard that undoubtedly must have been alerted to their equally royal arrival, Loki strode off toward the light, and regretted it immediately.

The obvious idiots who rode the oversized horses must have misjudged their ability to handle torches and reigns both, slamming into him head on. Now it more accurately felt like Hell, Loki scrunched up his mouth in an attempt to safeguard his dignity as much as physically possible, his ribs feeling as if they had been turned inside out. He should have them beheaded for this, also immediately. Or as soon as he could in fact speak.

"I think that was legally your fault," a decidedly feminine voice bordering somewhere between irritant and bittersweet assaulted Loki's ringing ears. A female guard? That peculiarity temporarily moved aside, he truly disagreed. This was _unquestionably_ her fault in some insidious desire to overcome the God of Asgard in his weakened and disoriented state. Though, what _legally_ meant, he could only hazard a guess.

"Get the first aid kit!" Another female demanded, holding a gentler voice.

How interesting, an all women guard. Perhaps this realm had hopes yet. On second thought; two fires, two torches, two horses carrying two very loud women neither of which could seemingly ride. And now they wanted to aid him? Not a chance. Only if he tried to speak right then, his broken ribs would make him sound like a mewling woman himself.

"Come on, big guy. Do me a favour and don't be dead, okay? Open your eyes and look at me." One of them spewed out, ordering him about like a commoner or much worse, just like his father. And what should possess him with the need to grant her any favours? And why would he be dying when he was an immortal? Oh, he was.

The raven-haired God blinked under his closed eyelids, suddenly rendered mentally speechless. On a second recollection, did she just call him a _big_ guy? Well, that was a first. His eyes shot open, blinding pain shoved momentarily to the side.

And he stared. At a fair maiden of otherworldly qualities, none like in his own realm, showing a rarity of actual intelligence, demureness, and a certain delightfully chaotic element that sparkled in her brightening brown eyes. He most certainly was not in Asgard anymore. And this alien was aesthetically pleasing to gaze upon as well. Perhaps this realm were more deserving of his rule than any other yet?

"Wow. Does that one need CPR? Because I totally know CPR."

Loki inclined his head, that motion still fortunately functioning, to the sound of the second being of the female species, the one producing a rather ear-grinding noise, trying to decipher what she was babbling on about.

Oh yes, there was Thor. He had almost forgotten about the mammoth of a cause of his bitterly mortal predicament. Thor needed his hammer, not CPR, unless that stood for a Cretin's Permission to Rule which he was undeniably short on as well. Did they not know who they were? A sly smile crept slowly onto Loki's dusty face at that staggering thought. At blessed last! Someone who was not acquainted with his overly-pretty, over-glorified, over-exaggeratedly-adored nuisance of a golden-boy brother. The bells of happy banishments were ringing!

"Hammer! Hammer!" Though Thor seemed fast set on steeling the spotlight yet again as all attention turned to him, all staggering about groggily as if he had consumed ten tankards of ale, his commanding voice howling demandingly to the surrounding darkness as though it could produce the said relic.

Loki devoted a moment of his life to rolling his eyes at the award-worthy display of royalty a few paces away from him. That really did not depict Asgard in the most dignified light. Perhaps just as well the strange inhabitants knew not of who they were.

"Ha! He's looking for his hammer! You guys are like Thor and Loki!" The loud female suddenly exclaimed.

Loki's mental cringe was truly painful.

"Did you just stumble out of a comic con?" The one with the strangest of headgears he had ever had the misfortune to sight, continued her peculiar monologue.

As comic as they undoubtedly appeared, sadly this was no con, as much as Loki had wished it to be. In fact, the only well executed con was on their father's part, which made Loki somewhat ironically impressed with the Allfather. Yes, he had not thought that Odin had it in him to finally punish Thor like this, and doubly so, by throwing the God of All Fun in after him to make Thor's debut in banishment all that much more tolerable indeed.

Why else, as any other reason why Odin had banished Loki together with Thor had somewhat eluded him. Was he meant to stop his heavily headed bull of a brother from expressing his extravagant desire to exert his might at everything that looked, spoke or acted against him? Surely Odin knew this to be a hopeless, less than impossibly accomplishable feat. Or did perhaps a resentment stir within his father strong enough at the inclination that Loki was a bad influence on Thor? Honestly, he should know that Thor listened to no one but Thor. And, to his oversized hammer of course, since it did substitute the entirety of his wisdom driven activity. Hence this whole ordeal on his part was truly baffling.

But refocusing on the present task at hand, Loki was about to apologise graciously for his brother's unsightly manners to the alien maiden before him whom was again observing him with an awed interest to his utter surprise and befuddlement. As rotten luck would have it, Thor of course dispelled that rare event by remembering that there was more nonsense he could provide, fury and rage seemingly fighting for their right to rule within his head.

"Father! Heimdall! I know you can hear me! Open the bridge!"

It was very clear, but obviously only to Loki who instantly noticed that their welcoming delegation was growing a little ill at ease. The self-absorbed Thor however was in his moment of maddened element and only turned to the women in his own patented look of frustration, with an added mixture of agitation, his belligerent powers lashing out from his very threatening presence.

Not good.

Time for subtlety and diplomacy before his brother attacked and hammered yet another world into submission even without his hammer. Loki opened his mouth...and closed it, not getting in a word.

"You! What world is this!" There was no stopping the God of Thunder's blabbermouth fervour it seemed, even as the worried looking man who now appeared out of nowhere placed a hand on Thor's shoulder with accompanying calming words, only to have it shoved off and get a full blast of power-infused screaming in his paling face.

"Where am I! Answer me!"

If only he could have asked nicely. Loki noted duly as the woman with the amusing headgear pulled out some sort of a device from her bag. It looked intricate and advanced, an ancient relic of sorts as it glowed pretty white in the surrounding dark, and crackled like ice splitting under the swing of Mjolnir.

"You're in the desert outside the town of Puente Antiguo," the man, appearing of slightly younger age than Odin, spoke.

Ah, of course, the mortal realm. Midgard. Loki snapped his fingers mentally. It was all starting to make sense now as such names did not partake in existence in any of the other realms of eight, nor did exceedingly pretty looking guard-maidens who knew not of the mighty Thor at first swoon.

"What Realm?! Alfheim? Nornheim?" His brother of course insisted on being a complete Bilchsteim beast. Huge and dumb, usually feathered though, not scaled. The poor sod was in utter denial for his blind arrogance. Honestly, did he want to rule over all nine realms without knowing anything about them?

"Uh…New Mexico?" The rougher, long-haired woman said like that was meant to spark some recognition in Thor. No such luck.

Evidently, the human grew impatient as well, rightly so, and raised her aforementioned device of sorts at Thor. A horrible feeling jumped into Loki's pain ridden chest as it now most certainly resembled a weapon, sparkling with dangerous power in the cold air around them. That shall not make Thor any calmer, he knew. And waited. And here we go…

"You dare threaten Thor with so puny –"

Loki clenched his posterior, readying for the onslaught to come. Shame, the humans were starting to grow on him, at least for their intriguing diversity and for daring to threaten Thor in the first place. Oh well.

The weapon fired and to Loki's staggering surprise, and a flash of temporal amusement, Thor oscillated like an electric eel, and with a face worthy of a tapestry hung upon their father's chambers wall, toppled to the ground.

Loki's widened greens swivelled to the unspeakably brave and mighty maiden – an equivalent of Brunnhilde of the Valkyrior - standing there with her not so puny a weapon still raised and poised to battle more. It occurred to him at that moment that perhaps he knew very little of this realm himself, now abandoned to the complete mercy of these deceptively formidable defenders of this mortal planet.

Perhaps his calming words should be a suitable course of action, not that they ever worked with Thor. Still, they shall soon believe that Loki was posing them no threat. This was going to be a slice of an Asgardian cake. He began to stand up, painfully, clutching an arm still clad in the full glory of Asgardian armour to his bruised and battered chest.

"Honourable warriors, I offer you my utmost admiration at accomplishing such a worthy feat as defeating my" – 'brother' seemed rather dangerous for his present health given the circumstances – "compatriot here, as formidable as he claims to usually be. Should you lower your weapon in a kind gesture of an alliance, I shall inform the Allfather of your bravery here today upon my return to Asgard, thus releasing you from all harm –"

He had thought that his pleasant speech went ever so well…until Loki too found himself feeling like the slippery pond creature caught in its own accidental expulsion of electricity, hearing that irate voice again before all his muscles ceased to function in spasms of exquisite pain and blackness claimed his Godly mind.

"What! They were both freaking me out!"

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_God of Mischief, I failed terribly didn't I? But if you still feel like pouring out your outrage, here is my quick and simple, 3 easy-step guide on how to review: _

_1) Attach your typing device to Laufey's face. For this I recommend wearing warm clothing, thick gloves and an invisibility cloak._

_2) Hide somewhere while Thor storms in and smashes said face with his lovely rampant hammer._

_3) Ta-dah! An instantly hammered and frosty review! Now grab it quick and get the hell out of there before your butt turns to blue!_

_Thanks so much! Tora._


	2. I swear I'm not doing that on purpose

_Thanks so much you awesome Gods of mighty reviewing power! You are amazing and left me totally amazed! I only wish I could repay you by an equally entertaining continuation. So for the God of all Pranks, I do hope you enjoy!_

_Still Loki's sardonic POV (might interchange in future chapters with others). Sorry if plot progress seems slow here, but be assured that eventually I do plan to veer off the Thor movie._

**CH2 – I swear I'm not doing that on purpose**

Ah yes, those generously over-exaggerated and tirelessly revered legends and fairy tales that had plagued his entire life. His father had been full of them and always ready to drill them into Loki's very much unwilling head. Not that Loki didn't have a penchant for learning, quite the opposite, but he much preferred facts, not tales told by ear and diluted to laughable falseness when passed from one generation to the next. So it had been during those highly educational times when Loki had tried his best not to listen, devising evermore improved ways to block his brain from being exposed to such a mind-numbing nonsense that painfully lacked in any authenticity whatsoever.

Sadly to say, even after resorting to methods of near self-deformation by wearing a rather tight and hearing impairing headgear of his own designs, he still failed to filter out the endless droning of his father's booming voice. Well, perhaps one could not help but to capitulate eventually, when being told the same cumulus of tales for the five thousand and second time. It simply ceased being worth the effort of continuous resistance.

So now, blessed with all that useless knowledge, he could not help but recall and mock one of such ridiculous legends as he lay there feeling his consciousness glimmer on the edges of the dark. Because if this so called legend were true, then should he had been slain, the Valkyries would have taken him to Valhalla. Well, of course they would, since he _was_ a worthy warrior after all. But a concern of his was that Valhalla was meant to be an honourable place, or so his father had said. Honourable. Indeed. That was if one wanted to indulge in a perpetual torment of pain and endless, mindless bashing of someone else's enemies' heads in thankless servitude to his ruthless, pretentious father. Really. What more could anyone desire?

In all honesty, Loki would gladly forego such a great honour, for idiocy did not course in his blood.

He had to give it to Odin though. His father's talent truly excelled in disguising his selfish motives underneath the pretence of an honour beyond all imaginings which enticed too easily those of more simplistic minds. No surprises there that Thor could not wait to be whisked to such a splendid place of no fun whatsoever. Loki, on the other hand, would rather spend the end of his days in Helheim itself, playing tricks on the unsuspecting inhabitants of the underworld which did seem so much more enjoyable.

Just as well then that he was not one to believe in such tales and legends, unless he had gained an experience of them himself, seen them with his own two open eyes, knowing that his mind was not conjuring a mere image of what someone else wanted him to see. No, that prerogative was entirely his.

And that was why he had turned to logic on occasions such as these, when deliberating the possible outcomes of his likely demise. And logic informed him that the light that tried its very best to permanently blind him as he opened his eyes a little too fast and way too unwisely, did not hold a resemblance to the dark, golden glory of the fabled Valhalla. That place was not meant to blind its warriors, but to sharpen their skills, after all the very point of becoming prepared, not visually impaired, for a heroic fight, afforded to one after an equally heroic downfall.

That said, Loki was pretty certain, or rather praying, that no tales would be loudly articulated about his said heroic downfall, well, considering that he went down more like an unsullied maiden beholding her first sight of Thor. Yes, the shame of his unsightly demise shall haunt his pride for a very long time to come. Perhaps best to digress by figuring out where he actually was, since not in Valhalla.

So going back to this light, it possessed this unnatural sharpness and cold whiteness, the opposite of the sumptuous warmth and golds of the Asgardian glow. Therefore it could have been safely concluded that he was still unquestionably stuck on Midgard, and he was still very much mortal by the damnable agony coiling in his chest, and to add insult to misery he had been captured as well. How wonderful.

Yet Loki was never one to turn to mindless acts of desperation, he did not have Mjolnir for a brain, he had an actual brain inside his head. And being gifted with the power of an educated thought afforded him the use of his perceptive, narrowing eyes to look around, analyse his new surroundings, and come up with a plan.

Not that the said surroundings provided much to analyse. As the room he found himself in, or a better description would be a poorly measured boot within his smallest of closets, was of the most restrictive of sizes he had ever experienced. In fact, he had not experienced a space this short on accommodating any dimensions whatsoever. Even the posterior-squeezing turret of Heimdall's observatory yielded more elbowroom than this banquet of claustrophobic delights.

More disturbingly, he found himself placed on something so dreadfully uncomfortable that a bed constructed from extra frosty Jotunheim icicles would have provided more comfort on first imagination. Added to the count of maddening discomforts was the worry-inducing sight of the primitive and noisy instruments dotted around the room and the horrific unearthly waft of pongy chemicals staging a contest on his limits of tolerance.

And this was meant to constitute a healing facility? Distress and repulsion more came to his mind. Have the race of humans not heard of the simplicity of healing stones? At the least they were odourless, and conducive to actual healing, not an inspiration to suicidal deliberations which had quite the opposite desired result in his not so humble opinion.

With all that messing up his perfectly levelled head, Loki was about to make for the door to go and find Thor and get the hell out of this utter madness, when his eyes landed on a chair. An inadequately sized, metal framed chair lacking in style of any kind, which was the completely unsurprising part from what he had discerned thus far. But the shocking part, which was what paused him in mid-move from the bed, was what lay thrown _over_ the chair.

His exquisite, immaculate royal garb. All of it. Which disconcertedly meant…

Face snapping into a stern, resenting denial, Loki begged his eyes not to gain a reason to expand as they slid lower, slowly, finally landing on his whole noble self... Eyes wider than the staggering girth of Volstagg, Loki recoiled with a horrific groan that tore from his constricting throat at a view of his worst indignations. It was, without reservation, just like that one time in Vanaheim when he and Thor had battled valiantly a gigantically antlered beast, when Thor's overenthusiastically-swung hammer had caused the impressive endowment upon the creature's enormous head to sway an unfortunate way and with a surgical precision disrobe Loki's perfectly fitting trousers.

At the time, he had almost, almost degraded himself further by begging Odin to erase from him the memory of that particular undignified incident, yet his pride eventually, thankfully prevailed. But this, this was so much worse. He had been this close to being hauled to Valhalla in, in…an inferiority of cotton! In a polka-dotted dress! Preposterous. He was neither a peasant nor a woman, especially not a peasant woman! He was a God, and a prince of a noble race, with certain style and standards to uphold, for Odin's sake!

Appalled rage simmered inside of him at the distaste and indignity of it all, his hands curling into tightening fists. A spontaneous boiling inferno surged from his very soul and rushed outward along his veins, finally dispelling out of the very pores of his skin. This world would pay for this indiscretion and insolence! The instruments and chair went flying across the floor, crashing against the walls, broken and sparkling with hissing electricity.

At that, Loki stared in complete silence, his interstellar wrath suddenly forgotten. Now, this was interesting…

He gazed at the lingering vapours of translucent green curling out from the tips of his fingers and soon a widening smile spread over his curving lips. His magic was not taken away from him. Of course, how could it? Odin had been able to rip out their Asgardian powers, but Loki's magic was his own. His sorcery was as part of him as his well-formed behind and not even the Allfather had the power to strip _that_ off of him. Not that Odin should necessarily wish to do such a thing. That would have been deeply disturbing, and utterly blasphemous.

But moving swiftly on from that dreadful image forming in his head, Loki lowered a hand and spread his fingers to trace them over his swollen ribcage and let the heady breath of magic do its healing work. Liquid warmth spread through his bones and muscles, soon dissolving the pain completely.

At the elated feeling his expression moulded to its most wicked. At long last. This was becoming promising, foretelling of some rewarding fun. Inclining his raven head, his smirk grew as with one gesture of his wrist his royal garb shimmered away from the floor and wrapped itself over his much better feeling self, the cotton unpleasantness now crumpled in his hand, completely at his mercy. And he knew just what to do with it.

Loki stood up from the gurney and straightened up to his full height, raking a hand through his long, pitch-black hair to smooth back the dishevelled strands. He then closed his eyes with chin raised high as he made an intricate pattern with his wrist like an orchestra conductor performing his most beloved piece, turning round to inspect the masterpiece he had composed with a sly twinkle of retribution reflected in the dark emerald of his opening eyes.

It was only appropriate, after all. The Allfather deserved a little recreational repose after all that stress his disparate sons had put him through….and, Odin did have a special gift for laying down and napping for prolonged lengths of time. So Loki let him rest on the meagre bed in his stead, garbed in the splendid opulence of the polka-dotted one-piece that hung so lavishly from his neck to bare knees, a content smile plastered on his father's snow-bearded face.

Hmm. _Almost_ a perfection. But still, there was something missing. How could he, oh yes of course…

Loki tapped a finger to his narrow bottom lip for a moment, and soon after the magnificently golden helmet whizzed to life on his father's head, the mighty Gungnir shimmering to its horizontal existence in the grasp of his crinkly hand. Now, _that_ was a sight to behold!

Feigning a deeply troubled, thought shadowed face, Loki bowed to the life-like illusion. "Truly, father. You could have simply asked should you require me to babysit Thor. Yes? After all, it is why you have sent me here, is it not? As I fail to fathom any other reason. Yet should one exist, rest assured I will entertain my best endeavours to learn from this beyond useless lesson, whatever in the Norns' bosoms it is meant to be," Loki divulged to the perfected image of his father as if talking to the real Odin, injecting his most talented sarcasm into the smooth silk of his voice, a palm pressed stretched against his heart in a deeply considerate gesture.

"But now, I must leave you. For this world it appears -" he looked about the plain, uninspiring room with a flair for the dramatics and with a sardonic arch of his ink-black eyebrows, before continuing, "- is in a dire need of my great and invaluable guidance. Very, very badly."

Departing with a stride worthy of a king, he cast one final glance towards the Allfather, giving him his best smile and a mocking bow. He would store this image in his head for later, of course, for his own collection of worthy memorabilia and a well of inspiring illusions. After all, was not his father's birthday celebration coming up soon? He did so love to lighten them up.

Hands clasped loosely behind his back, Loki made his subtle way through an empty corridor, thinking how best to locate Thor. Scouring this meagre place would not create a challenge, but he needed a way to blend in, not stand out like a sour Jotun in human pyjamas. And for that, he required the power of observation and a great deal of luck in actually encountering some more fashionable humans. That was if those in fact existed?

Nonetheless, he deemed it shrewd to stop at the nearest window and look outside, observing for a while in hope that there was someone in this squalid hellhole with some sense of style. His patience paying off, Loki's dark grin played across his face as he eyed a man wearing something vaguely smart lean against a black and brandished mound of metal surrounded by strangely tinted panes of glass. There were three more all equally clad, perhaps some sort of a niche fashion within this otherwise paltry place. Though the men also wore something against their faces, blocking their eyes in their entirety which Loki shrugged off as completely bizarre since he did not see the point in not seeing anything at all.

His gold and green leather attire then flickered in a translucent glow of an emerald light, transforming into a two-piece black suit, tailored to perfection of course while also lengthened, with a silk white shirt and a matching black tie tucked underneath, adding on his own touch of a gentlemanly scarf edged with green, wrapped loosely round his neck and hanging down his front. Oh yes, much better.

Continuing on his elegant stroll while studiously taking in every detail of the human world, Loki began his quiet search for Thor. Although he could not help getting rather intrigued by the written signs he encountered on the walls and ceilings. What a splendid invention! He made an instant mental note to pin one of those for 'Exit' to the outside of Thor's bedchamber doors once they were able to return back home. Well, Thor did have an infatuated habit of welcoming just about any pretty face into his royal bed, might as well direct _everyone_ there and save his brother the bother? Well, just a thought.

Passing along yet another boring and uniform corridor, Loki suddenly paused at the distinct sound of breaking glass, loud scattered shouts and a general commotion of an unfolding fury of a fight. Ah, that must have been where Thor was. He should have known to utilize his hearing rather than just eyesight! Loki shifted himself into a slow reverse, directing his unfazed expression to the side.

Soon enough, Loki could not help himself but to turn fully and donate his undivided attention to the small square window embedded into the flimsy looking door. The scene there was so indescribably entertaining.

To his slight mental torment, Loki could not decide what was worthy of more appreciation, the alarmed and befuddled faces of the six unimaginatively dressed humans who struggled hard to restrain his wildly raging beast of a brother to no avail, or the perplexed and steaming fury etched on Thor's reddening face when he, for the life of him, could not get rid of them with one simple sweep of his massive arm.

Had Thor been hit so hard on his head that he still had not caught onto the small detail he was now mortal and relatively powerless? Not that this should ever stop Thor from thrashing up the place and throwing some humans around. Not at all. Mjolnir or not, Thor was still a force to be reckoned with and Loki would thoroughly enjoy this re-education of the insolent humans who dared to keep them both in this hovel of a place and clothe them so disgracefully.

Only Loki had to flinch away from his musing as Thor's puzzled face was smacked cheek first into the glass, shock evident in his raging blue eyes as he cast a wide-eyed look at Loki, who was stunned right on the other side.

"May I enquire as to who is winning, dear brother?" Loki thought it best to check, throwing on an expression of genuine interest as he observed the square filled by his brother's smudged and horrified face. Right. _They_ were.

"You are no match for the Mighty…" Thor bellowed once more in fatal defiance before his grimace, worthy of a whole new tale told over a few goblets of wine spilled during an Asgardian feast, started to slide down the glass.

"Match for what, exactly?" Loki was curious to find out, but then sucked in a sharp intake of air at Thor's surprised twist of his mouth, finally following with raised eyebrows in astonishment as Thor toppled downwards and out of his sight.

Oh, that was unexpected, Loki deduced safely after a split second evaluation of Thor's unprecedented demise, yet still readied to storm in to his brother's rescue, once again. Old habits, he supposed were nigh on impossible to wipe out, even with magic, and he had so tried. But his rescue attempt was hindered as the door slammed outwards fast, close to splitting his nose in two, was it not for his proactive, scarily instinctual teleportation.

Loki remained shadowed by the vale of spells as a horde of running human beasts then tore through the door and spilled out into the corridor, eager to get away. Well, he supposed he could somewhat sympathise. Admittedly, Thor, wrapped in a knee-length ladies gown was not the most inspiring of views, even his father appeared far more appealing, and that was saying something.

The more reason that Loki had to get him out of there, and try to knock some sense into his excessively stubborn and belligerent brother. Oh, the things Loki had to endure. If Thor for once listened to his ever so wise council, they would not have to face the perils of such indignity and shame.

Perhaps a little lesson in humility would not hurt…

Loki morphed into visibility and transferred himself through the wall. He stayed watching over a sleeping Thor while assessing how best to take charge of this seemingly unruly and badly dressed world of humans, if not going for a straight out worldwide domination which might have been for the best. Still, that could take a while, and even that shortly interesting preoccupation became rather boring and he ended up shifting restlessly in his chair. Well, he could have relaxed more if the chair he was sitting on did not in fact feel like the sharp and barren surface of Svartalfheim.

Loki sighed. "The things I do for you, brother. I fail to fathom." He leaned closer, nearly nose to nose with Thor.

And of course, as if on cue Thor opened his eyes straight at Loki, instantly recoiling as if seeing a crossbreed between a Frost Giant and a Slippy, the eight legged horse. Beside the point but who'd ever conjure a thought of such a horrific and distasteful union?

"Out of the non-existent list of things that frighten you, Thor, I never imagined it would be the sight of me. I find that rather offensive," Loki sighed dejectedly, inclining back in his uncomfortable chair, the sly smile creeping up his face betraying his true sentiments.

"Loki?" Thor blinked away his confusion, squinting at his brother.

"Yes?" Loki responded patiently, seeing as Thor also discovered his restraints, starting to pull at them to no avail.

"What have you done to me?" The God of Thunder's thundering voice was back again as he struggled against his ties like a maddened Bilchsteim giving a difficult birth. Really? _He_ did this to him?

Loki made a royal eye roll. "Honestly brother, I thought that even you would have gathered an insight into the situation by now. But since you have not, allow me to reiterate. Father took our powers, our immortality," he paused considering something with a thoughtful gesture of his head, "_your_ clothes, and cast us both out. And you blame your dear, loyal brother? As I recall, you hurled the words _old fool_ at the Allfather, amongst other well placed treason-worthy delights thrown rather irrationally at the most powerful being in the Nine Realms. So well done, Thor, for you have single-mindedly caused our banishment and now got yourself eternally entrapped in these very much unbreakable restraints, though I must admit, this whole new look suits you tremendously."

Thor paused a moment at Loki's heavily weighing words. He had been so focused on his fall from grace and the lingering thoughts of a battle as a way to solve everything, he had not yet even glanced at himself. Be it inwardly or otherwise. Until now. Unfortunately seeing the outward visage first, Thor started to thrash on the gurney harsher still, teeth coming out for extra support of his regenerated rage. "Get me out of here! Get me out of here now!" He roared with all his anger and might tearing out of his throat together with the words.

Shaking his head, Loki sighed for the umpteenth time ever since - well ever since his consciousness had first allowed him to perceive his brother's existence. "Of course, since you ask so nicely." Loki reached down and unfastened the tied straps from the big guy's wrists with dignified ease.

"Unbreakable restraints?" Thor gave him a murderous look but seemed to have ceased his wayward endeavours, pretending to act natural as he sat up on the bed.

"Well, I did not say undoable," Loki dismissed with a nonchalant shrug.

"Thank you," Thor said calmly for once, to Loki's surprise and a relief in equal measures.

"And now, give me some clothes," Thor commanded with an enthusiastic and jovial zeal like the king he forgot he wasn't, to Loki's returning embitterment.

With an inward sigh, Loki adorned Thor with a flippant shake of his head. "What? I am not giving you any of my clothes. For you should have exhibited more prudency in keeping yours. So go and find your own."

"Loki," Thor cleared his throat, seemingly noticing that he erred. "You know well what I meant."

Of course, Loki did. But he would never miss a chance like this. Not in a trillion years.

"Really? No, I truly don't. Would you be so kind as to enlighten me?" Loki arranged his face into an expression underlined by complete confusion as he inclined his head at Thor.

Thor appeared uncomfortable to Loki's hidden feeling of triumphant satisfaction.

"I need your help, Loki," Thor professed finally after a pregnant pause, blue eyes shifting away in disconcertion.

For a moment Loki felt something akin to sympathy for the golden brute, but that was not what his brother needed. He was rather proud of him though, for being at least capable of some semblance of appreciation, despite it being rather forced upon him with the help of some healthy manipulation.

"What? Would you care to repeat that? I am afraid I did not quite catch that." Loki turned his ear to Thor tartly, invisibly smirking. Still, he was going to enjoy this rare event. Thor had not the habit to need his help and an even lesser habit to admit to it if he had.

"Please brother, bring to bear what you can to get me out of this…terrible degradation," Thor's voice was the epitome of awkward as he pleaded uncomfortably, tugging at his pretty gown of the latest human fashions with his large and manly fingers.

"And what is it that I can…bring to bear?" Loki would hear his brother say it even if this meant he would be later hammered to bloody pieces of regret, once Mjolnir decided to cease its vacation from Thor's Godly presence. So hopefully never.

"Magic, Loki. Use your magic and tricks," Thor ground out through his teeth with an askew face as if he had just swallowed an Asgardian citrus fruit.

Loki, on the other hand, tasted a chocolate covered cherry dipped in double cream, which is what his face was properly, thoroughly projecting. After all, this was to be celebrated as a sweet victory over all those favoured moments of Thor's when he had mocked his dark brother's even darker magic so readily and openly. Oh, glorious days indeed.

"Tricks, Thor? Why, I was held to the impression that my tricks were beneath the might of any warrior of Asgard. Do you not revel in showing off your best attributes? Though looking very fine indeed, may I make a small suggestion as to wearing your ever so sophisticated garment the other way around so as not to scar Heimdall for life should you find the need to bend over?" Loki made a circle with his long, slender finger for effect.

"Loki! Stop this travesty this instance!" Thor put some thunder and lightning into his voice, no longer willing to partake in Loki's apparent charade, any sense of appreciation long forgotten. Pity. Loki almost felt proud of his small achievement, no matter how unappreciated it was.

"As you wish." The God of All Fun waved his hand finally in defeat, and…clothed Thor in something much more appropriate.

"Thank you," Thor said almost gratefully, looking glad that Loki came to his senses.

That was until The God of Thunder thought it prudent to inspect his newly appointed garb.

"LOOOOKIIIIII!" Thor roared in outrage at the detriment to his manliness, not the least thrilled at the frill and the tightly clinging lace his pink dress provided. Well, it did hung ever so snugly over his enormous chest, at least in Loki's encouraging opinion.

"Should you not dress me properly this instance, I shall forcefully betroth you to a horse. Once I am the King, that is," Thor added the last statement somewhat less confidently, realizing that particular shortcoming of his threat.

"There is simply no pleasing you, brother. But should I ever become interested in horses in such a manner, I shall let you know. In the meantime, were you attempting a blackmail?" Loki sent Thor a hurt face that belatedly quirked into a wickedly impressed smile. "Well done. There may be a hope for you yet."

Seeing as he in fact lit up Thor's murky face, Loki let out a sigh while extending his forefinger and letting the air ripple with magic around Thor.

Loki could not help but laugh out loud as he saw the vivid apprehension engraved in Thor's countenance when he dared to take a peek at what he was now wearing, the subsequent relief resembling a shine of molten gold in Thor's brightening face.

"Happy now?" Loki thought it best to obtain an affirmative before his overzealous, tempestuous brother would find his clothes a good reason to start another war. One realm was enough already, in his generous opinion.

"It will suffice," Thor declared back in his arrogant-self, getting up from the bed, clad in brown boots, tight-fitting dark blue jeans and a looser but still very much flattering plain T-shirt in the shade of sapphire blue.

"You are welcome. I deemed it best not to arm you in your usual attire as I still very much value my life. The humans we encountered thus far were not entirely friendly," Loki pointed out, not that Thor seemed so much as bothered about his new garb now, looking ever so optimistic, as if not wearing anything pink and frilly would transport him back to Asgard.

"You may be as well speaking the truth. I do recall some unusual happenings," Thor admitted with a nod and a smile, still apparently puzzled by the whole ordeal that floated somewhat fuzzy in his head. "I see you have already acquired a disguise of your own, though I do not recall anyone else here wearing such a thing?" Thor gestured to Loki's very much human but in his seeming opinion unfitting and an overly excessive getup.

"Yes, and by anyone, do you by any chance mean the subservient humans operating this meagre facility?" Loki expressed pointedly, as he was as sure as Odin's beard not going to run around an inferior planet in anything less than marginally elegant. He would have stuck with his armour, yet a human acceptable wear was considerably safer than to feel twice in a row like an electrified pond creature, Loki safely concluded.

"Point taken. And now we shall finally return to Asgard," Thor exclaimed and started to depart, head held high, his bulky form swaying as he strutted with a generous gathering of ostentatious arrogance.

"Indeed we shall, but might I suggest we first acquire some sustenance? You know, considering that Asgard is a fair distance away and it may possibly take a short while?" Loki argued sensibly, at least he thought he did. After all he had no intake of food or drink ever since turning some wine to eels, spoiling Thor's coronation and committing treason out of sheer boredom, going to war and nearly freezing to death, being banished across half of the eternal universe and finally being rendered unconscious by a Goddess of all electric torments. It most certainly felt like a half a century already and Asgard was the second half of a century away no doubt, given that they were technically not allowed to return there in the first place. A minor detail, but nonetheless.

"Yes, this mortal form _has_ grown somewhat weak. Let us go and find some sustenance," Thor considered with a half-turned blond head, rubbing his belly eagerly with one giant hand. On sudden impulse, Loki prayed that Earth maintained a large enough stockpile of roast beast to satisfy the undoubtedly multi-dimensional appetite of Thor in his mortal form. Otherwise, Odin save them! Yet again.

Thor's stubborn resolution and recent events swimming in his head, Loki considered it best to warn Thor of the potential dangers before venturing out. He placed his hand over Thor's enormous bicep to turn him round, and exhaled an imploring breath. "Just before we go out for you to eat everything in sight, may I advise you not to attack everyone on first encounter? You know, the humans may actually be inclined to talking instead."

"Do not fret, my brother. I was unprepared and ambushed by too many to handle easily. I assure you that shall not happen again," Thor indeed assured him of doing exactly what he was worried about, to Loki's never stopping exasperation.

"That was not what I…" Loki tried to say but found himself already talking to Thor's vast expanse of his back, the rest of Thor disappearing in a fearless strut towards the bright glow of the exit.

At the last moment before Thor vanished from his view, Loki flicked out a finger and a prettily written 'Kick Me' appeared in large pink letters right across the back of Thor's wide and rippling shoulders. Well, he _was_ literally asking for it, might as well help him out.

"Right behind you," Loki grinned evilly as he followed Thor out of the useless healing facility and stumbled out into the scorching sun of the earthly planet, being blinded yet again. He'd really have to do something about this, perhaps conjure some black matter above his head for shade? Though that may not have been the most low-key tactic right now.

Not that Thor was terribly low-key to start with, employing his inexplicable yet rather customary impulse to charge straight ahead without having a clue as to where he was, or where he was headed. Perhaps stopping once in a while to look around and asses the workings of this foreign village they seemed to have been taken to would have been prudent?

They had found themselves on an alien planet full of dangerous and possibly deadly inhabitants and yet Thor marched right through like he owned the place, the memory of his mortality and hammer-less status not settling in at all. As admirable as his intrepidity was, soon enough, Loki's mental misgivings have been thoroughly justified.

Out of his musings whilst also searching for a tavern of sorts, Loki spotted through his sensitive perception as an enormous beast clad in metal armour began to take off fast and charge straight at his godly brother.

It was a subconscious, utterly idiotic yet natural instinct that made him blindly leap at Thor and shove him out of the way, shimmering off a split second too late. Damn his mortal reactions and Thor's still immortal arrogance. The thing smashed right into his flawless face and knocked him hard onto his back to an even harder ground, adding a jiggling pain to his bones.

"Brother, I am at a loss for words," Thor appeared taken aback for once as he realized what had tackled him and why at the last moment, seeing Loki grunting on the ground next to the big fat legs of a gigantic metal beast.

Just marvellous. How was it that whenever he managed to save Thor, his brother automatically lost the capacity of speech, while the humans who seemed compelled to clobber him on sight always had something to say?

"I'm so sorry! I swear I'm not doing that on purpose!"

Loki heard a painfully familiar voice exclaim with an impressive amount of emotion that made his eyes unroll from under his lids. He begged to completely disagree. It was clear that this woman had been an appointed warrior of the human race and hell-bent on hunting Thor and he down to take them captive at the best, if not slay them on sight.

This called for his skills of a most dangerous nature.

That was, if he could actually get up.

* * *

_A/N: I hope you don't think that I don't like Thor (since I am not giving him a huge credit so far) as I totally adore him as well as Loki. But he was a bit of a narrow-minded, arrogant oaf to start with, so he will learn his lessons soon enough._

_I would so love to hear your feedback and I will not abandon this story if you don't abandon me! Reviews are vital to my existence, steady continuation and sanity. :D So please, please let me know how I am doing and what you think? _

_And as a gentle encouragement he is another instalment of my easy 3-step guide to reviewing:_

_1) Print out a life-size cardboard cut-out of Thor and depart for Puente Antiguo; sandwiches, bottled water, sunglasses and hats are recommended._

_2) Fasten your reviewing device to the back of Thor's head and place the cut-out anywhere in plain view. I mean upright, for Odin's sake!_

_3) Wait, while eating and drinking aplenty, for Jane to reverse into Thor, and voila. Instant crushed Thor-face review!_


	3. Somebody get the mortal a Danish

_I can't thank enough to all of you for your lovely reviews and also for favouriting and alerting. Though I hope my second chapter has not caused any discouragement? As not many of you came back from the first one it seems and I hope it was not me responding to you, lol! If so, just kick me! I would be ever so excited and grateful if you could please leave a review as otherwise my silly drivels seem so meaningless, bah! Shout at me if you hate it or like it! :)_

_Varying POVs here, hope it will not be confusing. _

**CH3 - ****Somebody get the mortal a Danish**

Thor truly _was_ lost for words. Not only had Loki possibly spared him from an embarrassing folly, his much lighter brother had been able to shove him out of the way far too easily. How could this be? He was Thor, the undefeated warrior and the crown prince to the mighty Asgard. Unable to think otherwise, he had been so certain that this was all some kind of a dream, a masterpiece illusion perhaps spun by Loki's extraordinary mind.

Yet as he watched his younger brother splayed out on the ground, a shaking hand squeezing brokenly against his chest, he realized that this was no lie. Loki's deceptions would always shatter after he was brought down, and as far as he could tell, now that he was in fact looking with his two opened eyes, nothing had changed, nothing at all.

Stunned at the truth that had been refusing to visit his mind, for the first time in his life Thor felt this strange, unpalatable pressure in his gut, thinking it a small sensation of guilt and uncertainty squirming in the corner of his stomach like a serpent biting with an unknown poison. Then again, maybe it was simply hunger?

Yet still, knowing what to do had always felt natural to him, a feat as easily accomplished as breathing, unquestionable and entirely subconsciously performed. Granted, just like breathing, his thought process was generally unanimous in what needed to be done, which usually involved smashing everything in sight.

But now, without the feel of the power of Mjolnir slotted rightfully into his hand, what should he do? Had Mjolnir been truly in the centre of all his thoughts and actions? Well, yes, but if his banishment was a test to the source of his true might, his father need not worry. For hammer or not, he could still feel a very compulsive urge to punch something right now, and very, very hard.

Indeed. Loki must have experienced a moment of utter foolishness, thinking that Thor needed to be saved. After all, Loki had never possessed the same physical hardness and battle prowess as he, or as any Asgardian warrior for that matter. This puny beast might have caught him off guard once before but it would not topple Thor so easily again, if at all! For having the undue insolence to hurl his little brother to the ground, he'd re-educate this monster of metal on who was in charge. In the Norns honour, he would slay it where it stood with his bare hands if he had to, and father would see he needed no Mjolnir to do so!

Yes…indeed, but perhaps after he had filled this rumbling belly of his with so much needed sustenance.

* * *

Feeling over every single fracture of his ribs again, Loki contemplated whether there was such a thing as a spell casting speed contest, because if there were, he had no doubt he would have been the winner. Thor's bolts of lightning were nowhere near as fast as Loki's frantic healing attempts at that very moment, because he'd rather be chained to Mjolnir's handle for all eternity than to be dragged back to that ego crushing torture chamber humans dared to call the hospital despite it lacking any hospitality whatsoever. Well, at least they did not lack in a sense of humour which was mildly encouraging.

So he bit back the pain whilst his beaten mortal tissues were still repairing and hauled himself to his polished black shoes as majestically as he could muster, standing up no sooner than the human Valkyrie and her Warriors Two came rushing alongside their ghastly beast and headed speedily towards he and Thor.

Loki was about to step forth all determined and intrepid looking with his cunning ploy flowing through his head when from the corner of his eye he discerned Thor's tell-tale swagger head towards the three, a dumbass determination pinned to the blond stubble of his face.

Oh no, Hel no…Thor was to delicacy like a Jotunheim beast to a goat and diplomacy in his brother's dictionary spelled swing Mjolnir faster, which would only beg the question what would Thor swing without his impressive tool?

Not exactly thrilled at the prospect of finding out the answer to that, Loki attempted to cast pacifying thoughts into Thor's mortal head, promptly mortified to discover that it didn't work. It appeared that his most powerful, higher function abilities had been ripped out after all, to his bitter, grievous disappointment. Honestly, where was the fun in that?

Just as well his nimble mind could not have been so easily detached like Thor's and was therefore very much firm in its rightful place, serving as Loki's saving grace. It took one discreet gesture of his hand, and an invisible rippling of energy sprung up directly in Thor's path, and Loki watched with stifled satisfaction as the mammoth of an oaf clanked against what looked like thin air and rebounded backwards with a befuddled face.

Loki took an instant advantage of the large vacated space, swiftly taking the front line position to greet warmly the armed and dangerous assembly of humans.

It may have been painfully disappointing that thought-control was out for the count, but Loki was more than content to equip himself with the next best thing, slashing on his most disarming, charm exuding smile. His bow that followed was an epitome of elegance and courtesy as he extended one arm to the brown eyed woman, the seeming leader of the three despite being also the shortest, and hence to his instant liking.

"How delightful to see you again," Loki whipped his voice into its most delicious of qualities, all smooth and enticing with extra pure molten honey cascading down his tongue as he pulled the earthling's hand to his mouth to brush her knuckles gently against his brilliantly grinning lips, his eye contact unfaltering in its delivery of diplomatic manipulation.

And then, a lot of things happened all at once, all bizarre and inexplicable, worrisome and exciting at the same time. For start, a delicate and pleasing scent he was not able to place wrapped itself around his senses as an eager curiosity surpassing the entire universe reflected in her brightly sparkling eyes. That was utterly unexpected from a mortal, yet that was not the worst. He pulled slowly back from her but still held onto her fingers in a momentary, and utterly perplexing hesitance to let go, the contact causing him to relish her openly given warmth. Relish? Granted, all the Asgardian women he had ever touched were so openly cold, they might as well have been born on Jotunheim, but still. He never relished, he controlled!

And as a final blow to his masculine pride, his forest green, deeply ponderous gaze lingered on her in some mutual otherworldly entrapment, and Loki could not help but haltingly marvel at the completely natural yet damnably striking beauty of her face, free from the paints and glitter that Asgardian women tended to wrap their skin in like another layer of clothing. And for a split moment, spontaneously, before his inborn ego snapped it out of him, he wondered if any of those he had ever looked upon would, like her, be able to unfold before him like some rare and prized flower that bloomed miraculously in the farthest reaches of the darkest cosmos.

"_Good_ to see you _too_," the brown-haired beauty answered slowly as if taken by surprise, shrugging her small shoulders with a gently creeping blush across her cheeks as she gave a shy and demure smile. She glanced about at her companions before directing her wonderstruck eyes back at the younger prince.

Unbeknownst to her, her reaction created another unprecedented and surreal one in Loki, stirring an utterly contrary revelation and shock in the God of Lies in turn. Given the very much close-by proximity of Thor, she was swooning…at _him_ instead? After all, and by the Asgardian law, were not all the covetous and blushing reactions always entirely reserved for Thor? Then why should this encounter be any different? Ah yes, they were far away from Asgard.

All that said, he found himself so unexpectedly frozen that he had in fact forgotten about the delivery of his cunning ploy. Instead, he felt a sudden compulsion to double-affirm himself that her eyes were not indeed turned to his brother, and hence rendering Loki a total idiot, or that his genes had not suffered a sudden, inconceivable mutation and turned him into a Thor lookalike. Although he would have been disappointed with the former, he truly feared the thought of the latter.

But the God of Thunder had by nature snuffed out the moment by barging in with his shining blond annoyance, swooping in with his all-encompassing, universe birthing grin.

"How fares My Lady?" Thor snatched unashamedly the same hand Loki still held and planted his own stubble-fringed, manly lips to the same knuckles, though the brown eyes belonging to those knuckles still held Loki's gaze exclusively, causing an uncertain smile twist the thin line of his mouth. Loki was thrown, hard, and by that he knew he was definitely still not Thor. Different laws or not, it must have been this side of the star speckled space, possessing some gravitational anomaly that have crazed this world with madness, or having an opposite polarity which made her eyes drift to him and not Thor.

"My…Lady?" The mortal questioned curiously whilst her eyes were still ponderously locked on Loki, finally tearing away and turning to Thor long after hearing his smoothly delivered words.

"You _are_ a woman, are you not?" The blond brother tilted his head with a hint of worried puzzlement, soon a dazzling grin adding even more light to his face. All he was missing was a halo to allow him to happily fly off even without his hammer, Loki discerned with an inward grunt of displeasure.

The dark God would have rolled his eyes if they weren't still inexplicably pinned to the human.

"The last time I checked, yes," a light laugh flowed from her well-formed lips with an uncertain head gesture as she tried to figure them out as if they had plummeted down from outer space. Neither entirely surprising nor untrue, Loki admitted, since they technically had, and trying to blend in with Thor by his side was akin to prancing about whilst holding hands with a frost troll of Nifleheim who was having a riveting convo with Slippy, the eight legged horse.

"Oh, I am Jane. And this is Darcy and this here is Doctor Selvig," Jane told them with a frozen smile, turning to point at her companions to introduce them.

When she turned back though, the riveting smile and a splash of colour was all but gone from the younger looking man whilst the rather big guy filled the entire space in front of her after suddenly dropping her hand.

"I assure you that we are both no longer in any need of a medical attention," Thor proclaimed with a puff of warlike air, sending a reassuring look to Loki though noting he didn't seem quite thoroughly reassured.

"Oh, no, no, He is not a medical doctor at all," Jane rushed to explain, seeing the tension rise in the leaner of the two as he slightly backed away. The muscle man though instantly switched from harm to charm.

"Then, it is nice to make your acquaintance, Jane," Thor turned into a fountain of allure, overflowing like an opened faucet missing a valve, capturing and lifting her hand back up for another kiss. As they posed no immediate threat, he found himself more than willing to set aside the punishment of the abhorrent beast that had dishonoured Loki, for this warrior maiden was its master it seemed, and he mastered maidens even better than beasts, especially the beautiful ones – beautiful maidens that was, not beasts.

"Is it a custom to have one name for a woman, and devise two for men in this realm?" Thor questioned in genuine interest as family names were of much importance back on Asgard and in the Nine Realms. Well, one needed to know how to honour those slain in battle properly, after insulting them in the same battle, but he was not sure of many other uses for knowing names.

"Oh, um, no. Doctor is not a name either, it's a title," Jane explained patiently, trying her best to tug her hand away from Thor, more so encouraged by her sidelong glance to Selvig who was circling a finger around his temple rather meaningfully.

"I must say, I do enjoy titles. I happen to have one myself," Thor started to share happily, his grin at its widest as he lived on admiration and wasn't going to miss out on it here. Loki, however, felt a sudden need to seal Thor's mouth shut with a permanent spell, finally snapping from his temporary, inconvenient imbalance. About time as well, he should have been devising ways to either get he and Thor back to Asgard or to take over this realm should the former fail. What he should not have been doing was concern himself with fears and attentions from an inferior race that he had no intention to be attended by.

Strangely though, his actions were not quite obeying his thoughts. And that was one to add to a lots of inexplicable firsts that had happened already. As Loki found himself instead busy projecting an image of Thor's gruesome disembowelment into his own head upon seeing him still fondle the leading warrior's hand. His rapid and astonishing mental compulsion to end his brother in such a violent way was truly new to him. Well, mostly.

Then, something stirred from behind the one called Jane.

"Hey, Darcy here." A face swum up from around Jane's shoulder, beaming lustfully at Thor. Ah, some normalcy at last, Loki mused inwardly, unsure if he should be pleased or disappointed as it seemed that gravity functioned in this place just fine, after all.

"Sorry I tased you," the woman said in a tone that lacked any sincerity, which Loki could completely relate to, apart from the lacking to convince part of course. "And you," she added as she swung her bouncing locks of chestnut to Loki, her normally armed hand extending towards the princes, causing them both to jerk back ever so slightly in reflexive apprehension.

"Are you planning on doing it again?" Loki tilted his head to her, his voice laced with perfectly _convincing_ dark politeness, not a trace of the interstellar hostility he felt very strongly at that moment showing on him at all.

Still, a small revenge was in order, whether or not she in fact intended to electrify them again or not. Loki's finger twitched behind his back and her glasses fogged up like a shower screen hit by an angry explosion of hot steam. She really did utilize the strangest of fashion accessories. First a woolly headgear that served as no protection whatsoever and now equally baffling eyewear that seemed so distorted, she could not possibly see anything at all.

"No! At least, I don't think so," Darcy assured them, taking off her ocular accessory to rub at it intently with a vivid expression of earthly annoyance. The manner of her so called assuredness however spurred even Thor into obtaining a more assuring assurance.

"Do you swear?" Thor turned to Darcy after finally letting go of Jane's hand, to Loki's cerebral relief. He had not realized until now how much hard work killing Thor in his mind truly was.

"Yeah, quite a lot," Darcy admitted, still cursing her fogging glasses.

"Quite a lot, what?" Thor shook his head, appearing lost.

"Swearing," Darcy made a face, lengthening the word. She put her cleaned glasses on, only for them to gain a healthy film of condensation once again. "You know, since you asked?" She shook her eyewear in the air as if that would help, side glancing Jane, who only shrugged in helpful response.

"I do not understand." Thor's expression confirmed as much.

"Me neither," Darcy mumbled more to herself as she battled with the humidity surrounding her eye accessory in the otherwise dry air.

"Maybe he got out of the hospital too early," Selvig whispered louder than he wanted from behind to Jane.

Just hearing the word _hospital_ made Loki want to swim through space back to Asgard but since he couldn't and Thor was gaining too much attention, Loki quickly pulled Thor away from the three by his bulging arm. He had some slightly embarrassing difficulty in his mortal state to throw the solid bulk of Thor behind him and out of the way, but things really needed to be put back on track and away from this pointless banter.

"May I inquire as to where we might find a place to eat? It appears that hunger has made my dear friend here a little confused," Loki intervened smoothly, a placid smile offering an apology for his demented brother. Though he did not qualm about steaming up Darcy's eyewear at least one more time.

Ignoring Darcy's battle with her glasses that she could not help with since she was an astrophysicist, not a meteorologist, Jane slid her eyes to Loki instead and blinked. Was this guy for real? She was sure she had hit him twice, bone-crunchingly hard, with her SUV, and despite that, he was the one who appeared completely…well, polite? And where on earth did they come from anyway if it was from earth to start with? There was not a soul in this ditch of a town that was this elegant and actually had a demeanour to match. She had seen a few well-dressed feds creeping around that morning, but that's where the word 'well' ended as there was nothing good about them apart from their deceiving, arrogant getups.

Her cautious female side was screaming at her to stay away from these creepy men as they spelled trouble in the most extreme of senses, but the scientist side of her screamed back not to listen. And her scientist side was much, much louder and persuasive, given that they were the only evidence she had, and an evidence that could talk and happened to be charming and rather handsome was a massive bonus.

"You…may. In fact, there is a lovely little place right across the street," Jane pointed out with increasing enthusiasm and before Erik could have a say, she added like it was the best idea she had that day, "let us take you there, you know, for all the trouble we've caused you. Our treat." She could literally see Erik's disapproving head shake behind her, given that his suspicions of the two were rammed into her head just about every two minutes since their first rather weird contact.

"That is very kind of you." Loki presented her with a gentle bow and gestured for her to lead the way.

When all four turned away from him, he grudgingly dispelled the 'Kick Me' sign from Thor's back, thinking it for the best not to encourage aimless violence now that they were making such an adequate progress towards…let's call it diplomacy. Meeting these humans again was unexpected but perhaps beneficial to gleaming some better insight into this world alongside them, well, as any benevolent and studious future King would, of course. He'd never admit even to himself that it could have more to do with his inborn curiosity and obsessive need to unravel inexplicably intriguing female demeanours, which, unless he ventured as far as completely differing species, he had not encountered much of on Asgard. There even the goats offered more diversity than the pathetically uniform mould of nobility.

This unwelcome turn of thoughts to goats was however overturned as they entered the eating place and a surprisingly pleasant scent of something dark and aromatic lifted its way to Loki's sense of smell, mixing in a wonderful harmony with something sweet and buttery, throwing him back into a sense of intrigue. The feasts on Asgard had always smelled of the strongest spices and heavy meats that mingled with spills and breaths of mead, Thor's being the mightiest needless to say, all-together too pungent and revolting for Loki's refined tastes, but this he could get to like.

In fact, once this world would fall fully under his rule, he would introduce these divine aromas to the human healing rooms instead of that dreadful concoction of chemicals that made him want to voluntarily depart for Valhalla.

Still, with all these teasing temptations dancing in the air, two questions were begged to be asked. Why on Midgard were all these people so miserable looking, and where was the actual food?

"Where is the food?" Thor demanded as he haughtily glanced about, his hollowly booming voice echoing like the stormy vortex of Bifrost in the small space of the diner.

Jane shared an amusedly embarrassed look with Darcy before deciding to humour him with a response. The things she would do for science and her own damned curiosity, following two positively crazy men, thinking that they may have been beamed down through outer space on a readymade Einstein-Rosen bridge from another planet. God, was she really that desperate? "Um, probably in the kitchen, behind the counter?" She said tentatively, unsure of the big guy's question.

"Then, bring it here!" Thor smacked his bear palm against an empty table, rousing all the patrons from their zombie like state to look at him which he seemed only overly pleased about.

"No, no, you need to order it first," Jane uttered at him in a hushed tone, not liking the sharp build-up of mixed gazes in their direction at all. It was enough that she had been stapled with many unpleasant labels already, including the deranged seeker of swirly dust things and twiddler of bizarrely useless stuff, she didn't want to add a keeper of random strangers with insanity issues to the list as well.

"Then I order you to bring me the food!" Thor exclaimed commandingly, having added some whispering now to the general head turning event.

"What? No, no. I mean order from a menu," Jane close to face palmed, her voice showing a sign of stress as she picked up a menu from the table, trying hard not to use it to fan off the excessive heat that decided to stage an invasion on her blushing face.

"Please do excuse his inexcusable ignorance. He does not get out much and he hunts for his food, well, mostly…being from a very remote place," Loki swept in, taking the menu that Thor was completely ignoring from her hand gently and shoved it in front of his brother's blanked out face while pushing on his wide shoulder to sit him down.

"Wow, you mean like from the north of Norway? I've never dragged my lazy butt up there myself but I've heard they had Trolls there and all that, not that your friend here is a Troll cause he is way too gorgeous looking for that…" Darcy started to extrapolate with an impressive loudness and a blatant indisposition to subtlety and restraint equal to his brother.

"Close enough," Loki interjected pointedly, fixing Darcy with his hypnotizing glare and an underlying restraint to throttle her in his broadening dazzle of a smile, realizing only belatedly that his thought-rearranging ability was out of order. What a shame. Now he was reduced to practicing the more primitive methods of manipulation and diversion, promptly proceeding to slide his intensified gaze from Darcy's eyes purposefully and slowly to the curve of her ample chest and leave her well and truly open-mouthed and very pleasantly speechless.

Well, what did he know? Perhaps there was some fun to be had in the old fashioned methods after all. As a nice bonus, practice never hurt and a challenge was never considered an obstacle in his life. Speaking of obstacles, Thor was gazing at Jane again instead of the menu, which caused Loki to work double-time on his diversions, though looking at Thor's strong pecks might have had a much less desirable effect, not to mention the total eww effect, so best to return him to the menu already in hand.

With that in mind, Loki directed his emerald gaze to his brother, though debating whether he was quite prepared yet to reveal his relation to him in front of the humans. He had his pride to uphold which would have been a much harder feat to accomplish upon being genetically connected to a single-minded buffoon who had lost his primary source of focused thought. Loki, on the other hand, had already gathered much from this simple place, from the way the patrons sat and read from their list of meals, ordered them, waited around, ate them, and then handed over some sort of a paper based compensation in turn. Indeed. Humans were so bizarre. They chose what to eat from a writing on a paper without seeing or tasting the food and then waited for it - with no entertainment? No wonder they all appeared so despondent!

"Have you not chosen your meal yet?!"

"This writing. I cannot read it," Thor announced with an authoritative puzzlement as he returned his gaze to peer over the laminated paper, fair brows furrowed in knits together.

"Perhaps, this may help." Loki leaned over nonchalantly and swivelled the menu the right way around, sparking a bright grin of recognition on Thor's face which soon promptly vanished again.

"Ah. Now I can read the words but I do not understand what they are saying." Thor shifted the menu up and down a little, finally giving up and tossing it aside. "Just give me some roast beast, and lots of it," Thor demanded, visibly self-satisfied with his ingenuity of bypassing the need to make a selection. Whoever heard of such stupid thing anyway?

"Roast what?" Jane asked with a slightly confused interest as she started to look for the said item herself, not remembering it on there before.

"Beef. He said roast beef. Guessing from the severity of his disorientation I would suggest three," – Loki paused at the dissonantly roaring sound that tore out of Thor's stomach like a freshly defrosted beast of Jotunheim, - "or best make it six orders for him. And…what is that over there?" Loki asked with piqued interest, gesturing towards another table, to an older woman eating something fragile and buttery in actual enjoyment, a rarity in this place it seemed.

"That's a pastry. It's got a really yummy raspberry sauce inside. It's a house specialty," Jane divulged happily seeing the flash of ravenous delight pass through Loki's eyes, like he'd never heard of such a thing in his life.

"Wonderful. I shall have ten of those, and that dark drink as well." The raven-haired prince nodded to a mug full of that magical aroma he had smelled upon entering this establishment. He simply had to taste it.

"Coffee?" Jane asked and Loki affirmed with a light nod of his head, having no idea what she said.

"Two of those," Thor's enormous, resounding voice announced to everyone in the diner, even those in the kitchen heard him loud and clear, now peeking in through a pane of glass in the kitchen door.

Jane shook her head with an amusedly occupied smile as she got up from the table and went to make their order, though suddenly she realised just how much they were ordering. How could anyone be so hungry or did they simply not know how much they could eat? Either way, she'd have to ask Erik to pay for all of this, or maybe she could do a boot sale with the stuff Blake had left behind? That idea suddenly plastered a big cheeky grin on her face.

"Sup," Darcy meantime cut the prolonged moment of awkwardness with her bout of wisdom, realizing that she had begun to rub her chin against the palm of her hand nervously as both of the strangers stared at her as if she was meant to turn into an alien at any moment or pull out her taser again. Well, one of them already managed to unashamedly check out her boobs so maybe she could ask them something equally appropriate?

"So, you guys are like together-together, or together for some completely non-sexual reason?" She produced an innocent smile accentuated by her pursing lips as her eyes visited their blankly stern faces one at a time. Revenge was so sweet sometimes.

"Darcy!" Jane let her reproachful voice ring out close to her ear as she sat back down, keen to take over this fruitful conversation now that the ordering was finally done and dusted. She had been pining to ask those two weirdoes questions ever since Darcy's discovery of the two smudged humanoid shapes splayed out in the photo of the funnelled cloud. But how on earth does one bring out the subject of someone stumbling out of a tornado stretched across space?

"So how did you…could you say how…what…you were doing in the middle of the desert last night?" Jane tried to look indifferent as she leaned closer to the two eagerly after fishing out her notebook from her jacket as subtly as she could, noting as the stubbly one's perpetually smiling blues simply turned to her blankly whilst the elegantly dressed man's keen eyes of green instantly drifted to her fiddling hands. Darn, did he not miss anything?

"When exactly last night do you have in mind," Loki adorned her with supercilious tone of voice, tilting his handsome face towards her with a devil's glee hardening the edges of his eyes.

Slightly taken aback, Jane's tongue stumbled but she relented nevertheless. "I mean…when we first met?"

"Then, would you like to know what we were doing before you nearly killed us or after?" He said so glibly, Jane's mouth was left open, staggered at his interpretation of the night's events. Well, she supposed he _could_ have taken it that way.

Before Jane could slip into a fully shocked embarrassment though, Isabela brought two large mugs of coffee and a plateful of pastries and placed them on the table, dispelling the brief awkwardness from the air.

Pleased with her embarrassment and the genuine regret that flowed in her eyes, Loki snapped instantly back to all pleasantness with a smile to match, just in time to observe the incoming large platter stacked up with pastries in the likeness to the opulent dome of Asgard, all shiny and golden and smelling of mildly spiced and luscious divinity itself. He dove in with an eagerness of a wild cat that had just made a kill after two weeks of carnivorous abstinence, downing two pieces with the speed of light, finishing by pushing a few last crumbs from the corners of his mouth with an elegantly curved forefinger to be scooped up by his ravenous tongue.

The stares that he had gained when he looked up truly made him want to bring some of this heavenly sin back to Asgard, if only to cause his father some sweet irritation.

Odin hated all things sweet. He called them useless temptations that weakened one's physical strength. He oft attributed Loki's lighter physique to consuming too many sweets, even going as far as accusing him of eating all of those ever found on Asgard since they were so rare. Honestly. It never once occurred to him that it might have been his mighty air of bitterness causing the rarity of all things sweet?

Indeed, Loki would bring some back with him. A whole multidimensional pocketful of those pastries. Thinking on it some more, he shall teleport this whole establishment across the Yggdrasil to his father's private chambers to put the Allfather's inexplicable disrelish to the test. After all, his father loved tests, did he not?

Amidst the delightful imaginary sight of Odin's beard twitching in brewing anger, Loki let his soaring senses appreciate the sugary goodness he never expected to be offered to him by Midgard, when he discerned a giant hand going shamelessly for his private pile.

Oh, no, no, no. He might have allowed Thor to take his things away on Asgard, well, ever since his gilded brother could hold his hammer straight, even if to drop it right back onto Loki's foot that was, but now that the tables were turned in Loki's favour he'd rather suffer eternal torment in the confinement of that dysfunctional healing place run by demented humans than to let Thor take away even a crumb of his secret pleasures.

Loki would have preferred a more creative and educationally beneficial approach of retaliation against Thor, however the presence of ladies unfortunately begged for more subtlety than he would have enjoyed.

Still, not all subtlety had to be so subtle, Loki's inward grin was truly evil as he saw Thor's hand withdraw from atop his mound of pastries faster than flying Mjolnir, fingers curling in on themselves in a desperate attempt to hide. Loki never dwelled too much on trying to justify why he felt that pink suited Thor more than all that silver and red he wore, but he never missed an opportunity to reaffirm his strong belief. In fact, he thought that the slightly shimmering rosy hue he had chosen for Thor's nails was particularly befitting.

Unfortunately Thor didn't seem willing to agree with his fashion advice, anger already starting to boil in his darkly flashing eyes and Loki thought for a moment that he would become the victim of some hammerless crushing when two giant platters loaded with meat and a lot of something else saved the day.

The switch in Thor was astounding as if he had bent down to drop his voracious wrath and picked up an incarnation of bliss instead, reflected so duly on his face and he had not even noticed that his nail polish was now well gone. Thor looked close to seeing Valhalla as he sized the generous portions of sliced meat trapped in bosom shaped mounds of dough and two heaps of potato wedges on the side.

"You suppose you have quite enough there or should we get you six more?" Loki quirked an eyebrow at the impressive mountain sitting in front of Thor and at the way he was not fazed by it in the slightest.

Thor only took a large bite out of one multi-layered roast beast and answered with his full mouth, large crumbs shooting like stars from his chewing teeth. "Wook who if talking."

"Ah yes, good point," Loki admitted with a shrug, plunging into his own heap of pleasure, both princes oblivious to the attention they were gathering, including the gadgetry that started to pop out of nowhere to document this unlikely event.

Jane tried to give all the gaping onlookers a disapproving stare but she could somewhat sympathise with the townsfolk enthusiasm given that the most excitement anyone got in this godforsaken hole was _her_ dishing out a new instrument. Eventually, even she could not help but stare in wonder, completely forgetting to ask more questions about the phenomenon she actually should have been interested in, instead pondering about the phenomenon right in front of her. How could anyone eat this much food and look this fit? They really knew how to live in Norway!

"Congratulations, I believe you have just put Volstagg to his ultimate shame," Loki appraised his brother's valiant effort at eating everything on his plate and still looking hungry.

Instead of taking it as an insult though, Thor appeared entirely ecstatic, downing his whole cup of coffee in a few mammoth-sized gulps before proceeding to peer at the emptied mug with a sizeable, beaming grin.

"This drink. I like it!" He announced to the entire building again, and before Loki suddenly remembered what usually followed, Thor already hurled the fine piece of ceramics to the ground, delighting at the clear chink of it smashing to all sorts of tiny pieces.

"Another!" Thor's grin spanned galaxies at that very moment and he expected to light up everyone else's smiles in turn, as had been the natural custom, yet his busy facial muscles soon started to lose their usual spring.

It strangely appeared that no others shared his jovial enthusiasm and Thor's smile froze on his face. In fact, if he didn't know better he could have imagined that he was right back on Asgard as the silence that cut into his ears was on par to father's angered bang of Gungnir, or rather what always followed it. Yet what followed that silence now was not his father's enigmatic speech, it was some incomprehensible and angered language that would have sounded rather pleasing to the ear was it not for the scraping high-pitched voice of the woman that hurled it out. For a Norn's grief, have this human woman not heard of gentility and grace? No, he was definitely not on Asgard anymore!

"Sorry, Izzy! A little accident," Jane called with a demure cringe at the heavily venting proprietor, already resigned to having that label of 'attracting destructive lunatics' added to her already overlong list of all things weird. Her mouth still ajar from her shocked disbelief, Jane glanced from Isabela back at the frozenly grinning Thor, lingering there for a moment until finally landing her defeated gaze on Loki. "Norway?" She guessed dejectedly.

"Yes, you would not believe the number of times I had to remind him not to smash everything he touches, it has become endlessly exhausting," Loki feigned a tired sigh, secretly smirking at the epic truth of his words and the fact that Thor actually picked up on it as well, the fanned out lines of his smile hardening to the frost of Jotunheim at the edges.

Loki only gave Thor a rebuking shake of his head. "Have I not warned you before of the differing customs of each…place that we come to visit? Now, be a dear and pick up what you dropped or would you like the lady to do that for you?" Loki was almost, almost thinking of somehow sending his father his utmost gratitude as he had not had this much fun in…well, in at least a millennia for certain.

Thor frowned at that, confusion skimming across his well-trimmed beard. Whatever nonsense this was to pick up after oneself since he was the crown prince to the throne presiding over all of the realms? But Loki may have had some point on the matter. These humans did not appear too keen on waiting on him, in fact they appeared rather impatient. Even his charming smile that had never failed before was decidedly faltering now as he flinched at the face the proprietor had given him, flinched! - So he almost instinctively reached down to pick up the pieces of his breaking pride…and to get out of the view of that angered beast of a woman.

His frown deepened some as he tried to find the pieces that were not there, surprise gripping his already hurting head as instead his big finger hooked around the smooth handle of the mug. As he brought it up, Thor stared at it unsurely whilst putting it back on the table, remembering it empty but in most certainty not completely intact.

"What is that? I'm sure I heard it break!" Jane exclaimed, perplexed.

"Yeah, me two, and from Izzy's swearing that makes her three," Darcy added eloquently, looking at Erik for number four but Erik just stared blankly ahead, visibly exhausted.

"Well, perhaps he is not as destructive as he appears to be," Loki insinuated with a sly wink and slowly spreading grin aimed at Thor. Indeed, he'd find a way to send Odin a message informing him of his biblical enjoyment.

Thor however, was ready to throttle Loki's very much sincerely grinning face, adorning his brother with a very much pretend grin in turn, one promising a very imminent death to the God of Lies, with which Loki appeared thoroughly impressed, even anticipative of the delivery of Thor's facial threat. Indeed, Thor would pummel him at first opportunity, which would never come unless he would miraculously gain back Mjolnir in the next few hours, before he had forgotten about the whole incident all together.

Then, a commotion at the door broke their brotherly moment, causing them all to eye two townspeople who stumbled into the cafeteria with a good waft of heat and a gust of dust from the street.

The two men were covered with layers of dirt as if they had just danced with the dust devils in the middle of the desert, looking rather weary and bedraggled, flopping themselves at the counter to order their usual and then started to have a chatty moment.

There was some odd drivel at first, about a satellite crashing into a crater, or maybe causing the crater, they weren't entirely sure, or maybe it wasn't even a crater or a satellite at all, which was all rather pointless to everybody, but when they mentioned having their hands all over something really hard that was impossible to move, it propelled Thor and Loki from their seats with the speed of Bifrost's energy being shot out of Heimdall's impressively shaped cannon.

Time for some pummelling at last, Thor thought with an unrivalled joy and a massive grin aimed at Loki before he darted toward the two mortal men as though he was clanked to Mjolnir's handle already, leaving Loki to stand gracefully but somewhat in hesitance behind.

Thor, feeling the might return to him already, placed his hand on the shoulder of the newcomer to question his hammer's whereabouts when he side-glanced Loki who seemed to have enchanted the brown-eyed woman yet again, conjuring some kind of stack of green and crisp paper that he pulled out of his prissy clothes and placed it on the table in front of her, leaving her smile back up at him with much appreciation.

He would never admit this to Loki's face but he felt jealousy for the first time at his brother's magic, an advantage that he could not have without his otherworldly might. Was that how Loki felt of his strength and power? If so, then that truly sucked. Yes, he would get Mjolnir fast so he would not need to feel jealous for too long. And then he would get the woman as well, if only to put his little brother back in his place.

Loki stood all quiet, thinking that he should savour his last moments of having power over Thor, on so many delicious levels, but he knew that a certain state of affairs never lasted. That said, this particular state of things was still terribly short and being ever the grim optimist, Loki began to believe with growing confidence that Mjolnir's presence was anything but the start of their banishment, not the end.

In fact, this was truly, wonderfully priceless. Loki would have almost been proud of their father's cunning, for playing this game with his sons, that was if he was not one of those being played. Father must have had a moment of genius delusion to think that Thor could become worthy once more of his hammer so easily. Did Odin truly think that Thor would learn his lesson by rescuing fair maidens from their earthly slights? Or by enduring his magic-wielding brother long enough to break his belligerent and stubborn spirit?

No, only now did it make sense. This was a trial for both of them, and as far as Loki was concerned, he was as good a contender as Thor. After all, anyone could hold the hammer should he be deemed worthy, and Loki was as Hel not going to be left out from the uptake. Not this time. No way.

Hearing that Thor had already obtained the directions to this so called crater, Loki set off for the exit in graceful haste. Then seeing as Thor had also vacated the space near the brawny human and began to speed up for the door, Loki did not waste time to match the God of Thunder's pace.

Soon running like mad goats they reached the door simultaneously, colliding in the narrow space, horns against feathers, neither able to get outside without the other stepping aside.

"Out of my way, brother," Thor bellowed in his thundering voice. "The hammer is mine!"

"I beg to differ, Thor, the hammer belongs to whomever is worthy of it. And as fate has it, I have my magic still, my wits and cunning as well as my impeccable looks…and what do you have?"

"This!"

Thor drew back his oversized fist and thumped Loki's oh so impeccably looking face so hard that he too lost balance and they both popped out of the door like twin new-born Bilchsteim expelled out of a pressurised womb in a tangled, kicking and punching heap.

"Yup, this is so going on YouTube," Darcy muttered to herself as she held out her cell, capturing the best ever event this town has ever seen.


	4. Get Me a Horse!

_A/N: I was not sure if I would be able to continue as it is very hard sometimes to write a humorous story when life is not always conducive to humour or to having the time to write at all. And I sure did not realize just how hard writing this would be. Despite that, and mainly because of your wonderful reviews that have completely shot me somewhere right over the planet of Asgard, I am not abandoning this story and I will try to update sooner from now on if I can. I truly hope you can still enjoy it! Please let me know what you liked or hated or just whatever! :D_

**CH4 – Get me a horse!**

This was one of those glorious times Loki had found himself dreaming of, yet never actually dreaming of the dream itself coming to life. He had a big advantage over a hammerless Thor and his brother had not quite fully caught onto the fact yet himself, trying to punch Loki hard into his gleaming smug face with a fisted hand, Thor's frustration rising in his tightening facial muscles in wonderment why he kept missing.

"This used to be easier," Thor mumbled in between attempts to pound his brother to the ground and being effortlessly avoided.

"Oh, really?" Loki would have strongly disagreed. Indeed, he had felt the full extent of his brother's blows before and in those times his face had been hurting as if it had been crushed by a shrinking helmet, but it had certainly never been easy to hit him. In fact, it had been Mjolnir that dealt the most damage and now that Thor's metal appendage lacked in presence, vexing this gargantuan power machine had proven to be so exuberantly entertaining. Still, there were limits even to entertainment, surprisingly and sadly so.

"Thor," Loki tried to attract the God of Thunder's attention to point out his futile attempts but Thor's determination to vent his newly found competition to Mjolnir's ownership was truly admirable.

As Loki lay on his well-dressed back in the dirt blown in from the parched and water deprived desert, looking at Thor with a peevish expression plastered on his face, he truly wondered how many more eons of time would it take for his oafish brother to for once notice the obvious, yet again.

"Thor. Not that I do not relish the undivided attention you are affording to I and to my face in particular but this is neither productive nor leading us any closer to Asgard. Not to mention that we now have the whole village as an audience curious enough to discern who is winning and your hand certainly is not a convincing contender at this very moment," Loki commented in a very calm and assured manner.

Thor finally stopped his pounding and gave his ineffective Godly hand a slow and appraising onceover, the breakthrough finally showing on his face in the form of an unimpressed scowl. "This is hardly fair, brother," Thor protested with deepening blue in his eyes.

"I would like to remind you to tell that to your hand when it decides to swing your hammer in my unarmed direction." Loki raised a raven brow.

"Then you admit it is _my_ hammer," Thor announced with a triumphant tone of voice and a grin to match, his previous offence quickly forgotten.

Loki sighed, summoning much needed mental strength. "Yes. I solemnly admit it. It is your hammer when _you_ and you alone command it. Hence I present my case. Are you commanding it right now? Can you call it to your hand?" Loki made a gesture with his arms, spreading them as wide as the grin on his twitching lips to make sure his point was received clear and loud.

It was. A little bit too clear and loud. In fact, Thor found that he had no problem imagining Mjolnir in his grip after all as he drew back his massive fist and readied to rearrange Loki's perfect face when a jarring and unrefined female voice interrupted the well-practiced flow of his mighty swing.

"So, you guys usually get it on in the street or is this some kind of a one-off freaky visit from outer space so you have to fight for dominance?" Darcy loomed over them as much as a short human can loom over two extremely tall men who happened to be laying down in awkward positions in the dirt of the dusty street.

Loki instantly looked up to her with a flawlessly unchallenged expression. "Usually, both. How did you know?" His tone was interlaced with ice-calm irritation as if he had been devising some not so nice ways to respond but changed his mind at the last moment.

"Usually, I don't," Darcy replied uncertainly, taken aback, not expecting a straight back answer which was quite the change from the silent, shocked reaction to her previously thrown in inappropriate comment.

"How not entirely surprising," Loki retaliated smoothly, the charm flowing out of him washing off the insult from his words so effectively that it left Darcy wonder with her mouth opened what had just happened.

She was about to protest against the unfairness of his otherworldly manipulation when Jane appeared out of nowhere and made her jump, since Darcy managed to block out all else when a hot guy happened to be in a close enough vicinity, not to mention two Gods of her wildest fantasies at once.

"Hey, I was going to thank you for paying in the diner since I don't usually have someone pay when I technically invite them but as I don't have the habit of inviting someone in the first place, especially anyone who eats half of the restaurant, I was grateful that you did. Erm, so, where are you off to now?" Blurting all that out barely comprehensibly, Jane was well aware that she really needed to improve her skills in casual talk, but since when did she have the time or opportunity?

Being close to Nobel Prize breakthroughs rarely lent itself to much socializing, which was sadly compounded by not too distantly dating a guy whose idea of giving a compliment to a woman was to tell her that she had the biggest boobs when looking through the Hubble telescope. Seriously? Her boobs were only big through a telescope? Well, she did not have Darcy's moons of Jupiter but hers were no mere satellites orbiting the Earth either, weren't they?

Mental direction sliding to satellites, what exactly did these guys want with the one in the desert? Was it brought down by the anomaly the night before?

"I am going to reclaim what is mine by right." Thor meantime got up and dusted himself off the manual and manly way while Loki made the dust vanish with a subtle wiggle of his finger, having to wiggle some more as the dirt from Thor's overzealous flicking landed on him once more.

"A right of anyone who can reclaim it," Loki did not miss to clarify, shooting Thor a gleaming look for soiling his immaculate attire, and for being continually thick.

"Yeah. And if you mean the satellite, it seems that the government is claiming right now what is not theirs by any right, but nobody cares." Darcy threw a contemptuous eye at the darkly shrouded car that just rounded the corner of the street. She hoped they had air conditioning in that black coffin of theirs as the image of boiled jackasses was rather disturbing, though also somewhat pleasantly satisfying. Speaking inwardly of boiling, how was it that the black-haired sex God was not sweating at all in that super-tailored, sun-soaking epitome of elegance of his?

"It is not what you think. Mjolnir will be mine and no one will be able to take it from me again," Thor said with mighty confidence underpinned by an even mightier grin and a side glare at Loki.

"What's a Mje-mje?" Darcy raised a confused eyebrow.

"Oh, sure. Have you _met_ the government?" Jane gave Thor a sarcastic smile. "They won't even let you get close, so how do you think you will be able to take it in the first place?"

"First, I shall walk in there, and then I will take it," Thor proclaimed with undaunted arrogance, then added with even more conviction. "And if you take me there, I shall take it that much faster. And then I will take you somewhere…and tell you all you wish to know." Sincerity breathed from Thor's every pore to Loki's great bereavement. Not only had his brother just taken a poll position in the fascinating human's interest, his ability to appear sincere without centuries of practice was truly annoying.

"Everything?" Jane tilted her head, ravenous intrigue dancing in her eyes. She was ready to jump through unmapped wormholes set on fire to get to the truth.

"All the answers you seek will be yours," Thor wiggled his perfect pale eyebrows and Loki felt a sudden need to deposit all those eaten divine pastries onto the pavement. What utter waste would that be.

Yes, indeed, tell her everything and cause a subsequent and swiftly executed annihilation of the human world by a very likely mega-advanced blood-thirsty alien race invasion who would be the first to hear of the eager to be killed primitive humans' presence. Really, what would there be left for him to rule if he wished to do so? Loki surmised mentally with an admittedly slightly-amused, but mostly-unimpressed eyebrow lift.

He was about to pull Thor from this madness when the older and by the looks of it wiser man did it for him, only by pulling the earthly woman away from them instead.

"Jane," Erik demanded with a discreetly imperative tone of voice as he nudged her aside, far enough for them not to hear. "They are messing with you. They call each other Loki and Thor and they talk of Asgard and Mjolnir. Don't you see? They see a pretty face and have every intention to lure you on some wild goose chase and then leave you disappointed or a lot worse. Please leave them be. They could be dangerous."

Jane wanted to launch an instant protest but his genuine concern stopped her in her tracks. Jane found herself torn. Dammit! Why did Erik have to make more sense than the two guys who were supposed to make sense of all the chaos wanting to be resolved in her head? She hated when he was right, because his concern meant that she was either in trouble already or blindly heading into one.

Of course, she would still do it anyway, but not when Erik was around. It was time to agree and do something stupid later.

Jane nodded and headed back to the two strangers and to Darcy who was evidently conversing in a very inappropriate manner again, all apparent from the devious and alluring grin on the one who called himself Loki and the innocently naïve and dazzling grin of Thor. God, was she really going to call them that now? Erik was so right! She was so in trouble!

After another few moments of lingering reluctance, Jane squeezed out her rejection. "I'm…sorry. But I can't take you. Have to get back to…," _not getting anywhere closer while I stick my head into my journal again and get astronomically frustrated_, "…work," Jane said with an expectation of a counter-protest from the two but none came.

"I understand, then this is where we say goodbye." Thor disguised his disappointment under a perpetually held galaxies melting smile, reaching out for her hand to graze his golden stubble along her knuckles once more. He really hated to leave this lovely conquest unattended but duty called, and duty came first and above all. Well, actually duty came after lovely conquests, unbeknownst to his father of course, but this time he needed to prove his worth and that was rather difficult without his hammer.

And there was no way in the nine worlds that he was going to leave Loki have his chance with Mjolnir while he was chasing after a mere earthling, no matter how delightfully intriguing and deliciously mysterious she was. After all, he could always return and get this flower of Midgard once Mjolnir was once again securely glued to his hand. She would not refuse him then as the power of Thor would rule again!

As his lips detached from her hand, Thor expected a shy giggle or blushing cheeks as he aimed his drowning blues at her glittering browns but what he didn't expect was her eyes not to look at him at all, instead curiously sliding sideways to somewhere behind him, to…to his brother?

Before he could make any sense of this bizarre phenomenon however the three humans started to walk away, his brother an incarnation of a frost giant as he stood there all frozen in place with a blank face, only missing even a hint of blue on his palely complexion that seemed to have repelled the sun like his own goats did a bath.

* * *

"You let them go. I swear on my iPod, Jane, they were the sexiest guys I've ever laid my eyes on! And you let them go? Just like that?" Darcy was visibly sexually frustrated, giving Jane the 'you idiot' stare from under her glasses that seemed totally normal again, not fogging up at all.

"Well, just how many guys have you seen?" Jane knew almost instantly that the stupidest question just slipped past her mouth as Darcy basically passed her time by looking at every single guy her sight allowed her to ogle in between being bored and passing random instruments to Jane. But then again scientists would not get anywhere if they didn't ask things in a scientific kind of way, no matter how obvious the answers may have seemed. Right?

"More than you, plus about a million? In case you didn't notice I actually see guys as opposed to instruments all day long, so unless those instruments of yours point out guys to you, I'd say I have a pretty healthy head start on that subject. And since I clearly win on that subject, I am giving you a very educated opinion when I say that those two are like so totally abnormally sexy they might as well be aliens from planet Eden 108 a for all I know," Darcy elaborated with a raised eyebrow, giving Jane a bit of a 'doh' tone like Jane was an alien herself because she didn't agree with their awesome appearance.

"And they are both so into you but of course you don't notice. Darn, I need to be so less obvious next time and play the ignorant and uninterested one as that's what seems to fill the boots on their planet apparently." Darcy pushed her glasses back up her nose as if that signalled her resolve despite not being even remotely capable of being ignorant and uninterested.

Jane, on the other hand, found herself incapable of non-scientific response without thinking about it scientifically first. So first then, she never considered herself picky or shallow when it came to guys that she sometimes tried to date, usually to appear somewhat normal, but to be honest she usually had more fun with her own thoughts than with the conversations with guys so uninteresting they instantly bounced off her head like heat off a white surface.

Blake had certainly been the prime testament to her undiscriminating choices when it came to men. Not that she usually found herself in the right places to find the more appealing kinds of specimen, given that she was closer to dating flashing screens than people, but she guessed that Darcy knew what she was talking about since her intern's brain had a little more room than Jane's since it didn't try to decipher the secrets of the universe and all those infinitely spanning questions her discoveries delivered.

Secondly, Darcy's iPod was pretty much a sacred shrine to Darcy and so with her swearing on it was like swearing on a bible and that meant that Darcy really, truly meant what she had said.

"…And you let them go?" Darcy re-iterated as she gave Jane a notch more obviously accusing eye from underneath her clear glasses, causing Jane to snap out of her brief self-evaluation of her sad but otherwise satisfying non-dating life and make her realize that Darcy was still talking.

"Let them go Darcy. I mean, who from Norway would come to New Mexico dressed like mythical characters? They are either playing crazy or plainly crazy. And from the look of pure conviction in the blonde one's eyes I'd tend to lean toward the latter," Erik drew his brows together.

"Well, they may just be role-playing? Who doesn't in this nothing-to-do-boredom-hole? And who cares about crazy when you get mega sexy," Darcy elaborated insistently.

"Crazy is not very conducive to getting an advanced, ground-breaking information. And neither is sexy." Erik rolled his eyes.

"You mean more like space-breaking information," Darcy corrected as she thought it sounded more appropriate, waiting for her wisdom to be appreciated. It wasn't.

"Space can be sexy," Jane started unsurely. "A beautiful galaxy floating majestically amongst the shimmering velvet vastness of ever so expanding possibilities…"

"Really? Jane, turn around right now and get laid. Preferably on Earth, and by a guy. Or two. Cause right now, you are starting to totally redefine the whole distance relationship thing and it's scaring me out of my glasses." Darcy gave Jane the look from under her eyewear, nodding her head knowingly.

"Excuse me? And you need to pay more attention to my instruments instead of everything else, especially every single man on Earth," Jane let out her frustration, turning away to head back to her lab so that her embarrassment would not be noticed. She really didn't need to get laid and then get cosmically disappointed, what she needed was a better, less rude assistant. At least galaxies were never rude and they did give her more satisfaction than any guy she had been with. Well, not that there were many… "And do you even know just how far away a galaxy is?" Jane shot out, wanting more than anything at that moment to show Darcy just how little clue she really had about anything galactic.

"Yep. The nearest one is about two and a half billion light years away. Which would definitely put you in the Guinness book of records for long distance dating. And with a woman for that matter which at least shows you have some spark of fun in you, I must admit," Darcy revealed, proud of herself as she rocked smugly on her heels.

"I can be fun! And I am not dating Andromeda!" Jane huffed, relieved immensely that they finally arrived at the lab so that she could dip her head into some instrument and ignore Darcy's nonsensical, yet occasionally perfectly educated irritable blabbering. But why in all the universe were agents crawling all over her things? Those overdressed, pompous bastards!

* * *

"I need a horse," Thor commanded partially to the whole town and partially to Loki as they strode along a street of the small and dusty town.

"Well, don't yell that at _me_. As much as I love to shape-shift into four legged animals, I do not believe it would lend itself to local appropriateness for you to ride me," Loki informed Thor with his lips turned up to a visibly repulsed smile, the amusement dancing in his eyes though revealing that he was not all that offended.

"You had no concerns about social appropriateness when that lovely dark stallion decided that your massive backside was the most beautiful thing it had ever seen," Thor proclaimed jovially, a big grin dominating his face.

"That is hardly comparable or fair. When I am a mare, I go for a stallion, when I am an Asgardian, I go for an Asgardian, be it a man or a woman. You, on the other hand, are an uneven mix of an oaf, a boorish beast of unknown origins and a fairly bearded Asgardian, hence highly inappropriate in your very existence. Get the difference?"

"Then, conjure us two horses, and you can turn to whatever you like to ride yours," Thor resolved the matter happily, ignoring Loki's flowery description of him which was not all too uncommon. After all, Thor had had the immense pleasure in dispensing a plenty of descriptions of Loki in the two thousands of years or so in turn.

"Ah, and have you seen the humans around here ride any horses? I do not enjoy to be obstructive, but I suspect we will have a better chance returning home the less obvious we are in our inter-galactic pursuits," Loki stated bluntly, sending Thor a subtle hint of him being an oaf yet again, and hence validating his previous observation.

"And what do you suggest, brother? That we walk?" Thor gave a sarcastic laugh.

"Of course not. Don't be absurd. We shall ride in one of those metal contraptions the humans seem to use. I have since devised they are not beasts but a fairly primitive means of ground transport," Loki explained, a smug expression gracing his smoothly grinning face.

Thor pondered on that one for a bit, then appeared enlightened. "Do you mean to say that we were not attacked by some beasts but by bad human driving?"

"I'd say, one human's bad driving in particular. She made a fool of us both, brother." Loki gave Thor a mischievous flicker in his eyes. He would most likely think of some suitable punishment for the human later.

"It matters not. For we shall soon regain our powers and return to the glory of Asgard," Thor proclaimed with a sense of proud patriotism, looking up at the sky. He kept looking, then when nothing was happening, he prodded Loki impatiently. "So get a move on, where is this transport you speak of?"

"Would you prefer a rusty bucket to regain your glory in or something a little more appropriate to the occasion? If it is the latter, I suggest you give me some time to find it in this Helheim hole the shoddiest of humans seem to reside in," Loki retorted in slight annoyance, looking around in vain as the word rusty seemed to be the most common choice to describe anything he could see going past them. Humans really needed to discover gold. It was the obvious and long lasting choice for transportation other than horses. Truly, the human contentment with inadequacy and stupidity was baffling. Well, except for those pastries, they were exquisite.

Thor gave him a blank face and suddenly Loki recalled the same expression on the man in the black clothing leaning against his black transport, all brandished and shining and undented like an armour worn to a first battle. That would do just fine. Gathering more concentration than usual, Loki let the car slip into his mind and summoning his magic, a perfect copy of the black as midnight sedan appeared in the street next to them, inconspicuously, just as a rusty truck was passing by, obscuring it from general view.

Loki made an instant move for the driver's door in case Thor had any ideas about taking charge himself, but a shop on the short stroll to the car caught his eye. It was full of papers with pictures of sorts, all arranged on a rotating holder, but what stole his attention was what the pictures said. 'Greetings from the beautiful desert' or 'We were here and saw' stood out amongst other writings, suggesting a messaging service of some strange sort. Exactly what he had in mind for a while, to send a message to the AllFather and confess his enormous enjoyment of his supposedly harshly punishing banishment. But which one would be the most appropriate? Ah, yes. Loki plucked out a card with a half-naked human female standing next to a prickly, oddly shaped plant in the middle of the desert, holding a sign over her private parts that said 'If there is nothing else to see, come and see me', with a small print of 'A perfect place to enjoy your retirement' underneath.

Perfect. He had no doubt that Odin would enjoy such a lovely and caring thought from his beloved son immensely. Well, since it was Loki who had cut off his father's deserved retirement so unthoughtfully in the first place.

Satisfied with his selection Loki wrote 'A place worthy of a king' and signed it with a twist of his finger, then waltzed into the depths of the dingy shop that smelled of musty paper. He handed the card to the shop assistant who appeared to be chewing on something seemingly hard to process, reminding him of one of those herbivore beasts of Vanaheim whose sole purpose of existence was to eat, digest, and well, let it all out again. Humans were truly so bizarrely yet pleasantly varied, as if each were a different species in their individuality, quite the opposite to the uniform and cloned appearances of Frost Giants or even most Asgardians, and therefore evidently so much more entertaining.

"Where can one send this?" Loki thought it best to ask as it seemed unlikely that humans have invented interstellar post. Well, even his father's ravens had to learn how to use Bifrost in the first place. In the early days they did not take well to the long and folded distances at all, most times opting to leave a nasty surprise in the energy beam for the next unfortunate traveller to run into. They were such vengeful and humorous creatures and so much to his liking.

"Well, anywhere you like, really. What is the address?" The young looking woman looked up with a bored glare, ending up staring at him uncertainly as if she had just seen the leader of her country standing in her dark and dusty shop. Well, he supposed he could not argue on that point, even though that particular plan of his was still well in its infancy. But all in good time.

"Odin Borson, The Great Palace, Asgard," Loki said with an unwavering confidence, and after adding an open mouth to her now blushing stare the woman took a long stick into her hand, readying to start writing on the back of the card.

"Wow, a palace? Is that somewhere in Europe?" She asked, her boredom quickly vacated and replaced by a facial expression full of hopeful possibilities. So, not so different from Asgardians on that point. So disappointing.

"It is…somewhat closer to Norway, yes," Loki confirmed, rocking on his heels with hands behind his back. He truly hoped they would find it, after all, the palace was rather hard to miss. It was only the planet that was significantly harder to pinpoint in the vast expanse of endless space. Maybe he should give her the exact coordinates just in case?

"Wow, I guessed it right! So, how fast would you like it?" The woman attempted a flirty giggle, this act revealing a hellish contraption wrapped around her teeth, a sight far worse than a female Troll that had once leaned too close to his face in misunderstood expectance with an expanding smile full of delightful assortment of all things disgusting, green saliva and remains of decayed food included. No wonder Loki felt a sudden desire to vacate the shop, though not just yet the entire planet like with the overly friendly she-Troll.

"As fast as possible. Perhaps I should give you the exact code, so you don't miss it," Loki pointed out politely, also wanting to get out as fast as possible. Her metal-decorated smile was becoming far too scary and distracting, in so many horrid ways.

"Oh, you mean the post code? Of course, you'd need that wouldn't you? Silly me," the assistant gave out what seemed like a laugh of an opportunistic scavenger and prepared her writing instrument as she listened with avid eyes.

Loki was about to give her the Yggdrasil coordinates for Heimdall's observatory, but thinking on that for a short moment he lost all confidence in her ability to deliver his message, instead opting to do it for himself. After all she more looked like she'd eat it than send it anywhere and so he snatched the card from under her sharply nailed hand and began a fast pace out of this deathly trap for unsuspecting visitors from outer space. She obviously intended to eat him too with her metal-chained teeth, her eyes readying to devour him whole. Who knew what these humans were capable of?

"Hey, come back! I'll do it extra fast!" The woman called loudly after him as he darted out of the shop, colliding into Thor's big blue chest and a wall of heat outside, not that the two were in any way related.

"Do what extra fast? Just what were you doing in this random establishment?" Thor caught Loki by his arm, a little angered that his brother had other priorities than getting back his precious hammer, but peeking inside the shop he caught a rather desperate face of a woman who was happily waving at Loki, shouting for his return.

"Oh, never mind. I can see for myself. Though I must say her armoured teeth look rather hazardous. Did it hurt?"

"The only thing that will hurt will be your pride when I swing your hammer and ram it into your overly imaginative skull," Loki retorted as he wrenched himself from his brother's grip and made a beeline for the ride on four wheels he had conjured. He'd be damned if Thor had the first pick at everything, especially now that his brother lost his powers while gaining extra intolerableness to compensate.

Being hammerless and lacking in magic though never impeded Thor in speed or his impressive ability to shove things out of his way. So in a mighty blink of dashingly blue eyes he was on top of Loki, successfully tossing him out of the door that seemed to have belonged to the more important person of the primitive land-based human transport.

"Ahaha! A mistake, brother. A mistake for you to think me so helpless without the power of Asgard," Thor exclaimed exuberantly as he swiftly claimed the seat of the man in charge, overly pleased with himself as he watched Loki grudgingly and wordlessly land in the seat for those who were decidedly not so much in charge.

Thor's triumph appeared to be threatened however as his eyes travelled over the controls, all appearing alien like as though he had found himself on a spaceship from an undiscovered realm. Still, how hard could it be?

The God of Thunder began to poke his mighty fingers at anything that seemed to stick out from the otherwise smooth surface, soon enough applying increased force to everything in sight as nothing was making the ghastly thing to move, not even the final angered smashing of his wide-as-pancakes palms.

"Ah, I think you have not hit that one yet," Loki kindly pointed his forefinger at the steering wheel, managing an innocent enough shine of his eyes.

Thor palmed the big round thing right on the centre and recoiled from a blast of the loudest, ear-shattering noise that had ever pierced the fabric of space. Or rather his now very mortal eardrums.

"Any other useful suggestions?" Thor refrained from strangling his brother after clearing his ringing ear with a finger. He had been accustomed to battle horns ten times louder than this damned noise but never had one managed to assault him so up close and unexpected. Humans truly did seem to use these things as weapons of the most imaginative means.

"Try giving that one a little twist," Loki suggested with undying innocence while motioning to a small key under the central wheel and to his utter surprise Thor seemed to follow his advice yet again, possibly only for the third time in his entire life. That was if he didn't count that one time when Thor couldn't decide on a design for his helmet and Loki had ended his brother's torturous dilemma by suggesting to honour his father's ravens by decorating his headpiece with the dark majesty of their beautiful wings. Of course his ulterior motive was to make sure Thor's helmet was inferior in meaning to his own, but Thor had never seen through his devious scheme, wanting nothing more than to please his father. Thor's predictability had led to Loki's easy victory. His gullibility was so thick then that listening to Loki's advice truly did not count.

Thor gave it a twist all right, that much was admirable, but the word 'little' equalled to 'excessive force' in Thor's own over-powered Godly world and so even without any powers instead of starting the vehicle he ended up with half of the key in his ginormous hand and one half still embedded in the ignition. Therefore yet again, he didn't listen. What a surprise.

"That was a _little_ twist?" Loki expressed his frustration by an annoyed shake of his head.

"Anything less and my fingers would travel backwards," Thor filed a firm protest, eyes flashing a lightning of dire consequences.

"Really Thor, how you manage normal daily activities I will never even begin to fathom. You have however most demonstratively clarified for me why the same woman never enters your chambers ever again. Not that it was a large mystery in the first place. Though speaking of women, let's find out if they are called the gentler sex for a reason, shall we?" Loki's grin was truly devious.

Thor though did not quite get Loki's last comment until he saw that he now held a whole, unbroken key, in a much smoother, smaller, elegantly sexier hand…

"Loki! Change me back this instant!" Thor would have summoned thunder up his brother's posh ass if he was still on Asgard. On a second thought, he would have rammed the whole Mjolnir in there if he still had it. Since he didn't, he resorted to applying his best imagination.

"Oh, but mother, how have I missed you and your wit." Loki put on a hurt face. "How else am I to pass these terrible trials if not for the glimpse of your divine beauty and a breath of your eternal wisdom?"

"Loki! Undo this. Now!" Thor started to gather some anger in their mother's voice. It was rather disturbing.

"Now, now. If I was to change you back to my clumsy, thick-fingered brother, who else would have the gentle touch to start this vehicle?" Loki said in all seriousness, eyes close to tearing up. He never thought that refraining from outright laughing was going to be so pleasing. He really needed to have some fun with Thor while it lasted, then he'd most likely end up in Hel but it would have been worth it.

"You can put me in the form of a Light Elf seamstress and I would still not exhibit any traits of gentility." Thor's vein of impatient fury bulged up on his neck and to make his point, Thor grabbed for Loki's immaculately brushed back hair but Loki managed to pull back his head and so Thor ended up gripping his shoulder instead, only much, much harder.

"That much is quite _painfully_ obvious," Loki hissed through pressed teeth, shaking Thor's illegally deceptive hand from his bruised shoulder together with the unsettling image of his mother being as strong as a fully grown Frost Giant angered by a stolen icicle.

"Then change me back or I will demonstrate just how ungentle I truly am!" Thor demanded, unamused. He loved his mother dearly, but there was no way in Helheim he was going to reclaim his prized possession in a woman's dress. Besides, wielding a hammer in a flowing gown was quite impractical as he had once found out and he did not want to even think of what would happen should Mjolnir become tangled in the folds of the plentiful fabric.

"Oh dearest mother, all this untoward violence. And there I thought you were the calming influence in the bonds of your did happen to you?" Loki could not resist one last taunt but as Thor was clearly ready to lunge at him, he sighed and let the illusion shatter. Oh shame. Well, not that he would not welcome a fight with a large chance of winning but he simply could not bear to hit his mother.

"What happened to me? I swear Loki, if I was capable of starting this hellish contraption, I would leave you behind and send Mjolnir back through your face to remind you just what happened to me. I will not have you stand in my way, you hear?" Thor truly had Mjolnir signs in his thundering eyes. He would get his powers back today and Loki was clearly trying to distract him from his ultimate aim. How could his brother not see that there was no stopping him?

"Ah yes, and as you smash up my face and everything else in this realm, father will enjoy it so much he will let you come back to Asgard and immediately hand you the throne in return for the immeasurable wisdom you have gathered here on Midgard," Loki remarked with one raised eyebrow, the other readying to guard his eye, expecting the blow from the now very large, Thor-sized fist.

To Loki's utter surprise however there was a moment of complete silence that followed his truthfully sarcastic speech, a long moment unfilled with threats of demise to whomever, excessive boasting, tales about excessive boasting, or any kinds of sentences including the word hammer in any of its forms.

When the moment became too awkward, Loki simply suggested the best solution. "Let me drive?"

Thor cleared his throat, together with whatever else seemed to have gotten stuck in it. "Yes, that would seem for the best," he conceded somewhat begrudgingly, looking like he ate a whole roast mutton stuffed with a generous serving of the ripest lemons. Ah, the satisfaction, Loki thought, already thinking of the endless ways to throw the hammer in Thor's sour face.

Pleased with getting his way, Loki swung open the passenger door to switch places with Thor. Thank Odin he was fast enough to pull back as the now opened door was promptly torn off by some reckless human driving past with rather inconsiderately inadequate spatial judgement in a rather large specimen of those transport devices.

Just how do humans get around their planet without dying? Loki stepped out of his to date most intricate object he had ever conjured, ready to unload his wrath onto the unlucky mortal who had managed to disfigure it. Except that there also seemed to be only one human on this planet who truly could not drive.

Loki stared amused as Jane run out of her SUV with panicked eyes, waving her hands frantically in front of her.

"God, I swear I am still not doing that on purpose!"

* * *

And for my longer than usual absence, here is an extra instalment of my 3-step reviewing guide:

1) Go back to Jotunheim since it is Loki's favourite planet and therefore full of fun. Oh yes, and bring an extra-large carrot with you this time.

2) Place your reviewing device in front of a frozen Jotunheim beast, step back and wave the super-sized carrot vehemently in front of the beast.

3) Wait 2 seconds for beast to defrost, then run like Hel with the carrot making the beast to dart out after it. Toss carrot aside as far as you can to divert beast, then return for your instant stomped on review. Departure is optional, but highly recommended.


	5. But, the hammer!

_Thanks so much to anyone who is patient with me and is still reading! I promise I will continue till the end! No obstacles like life, stressful work, life threatening illnesses, up and down moods or natural disasters will stop me! _

_Also please send a mental or written thanks to Night Companion who helped me take out the ludicrous and most stupid things I wrote out of this story! (Well, I didn't say all of them ;-)) Hope you enjoy!_

**CH5 – But, the hammer!**

"I am so very sorry! The door just opened right in front of me and by the time I saw it, I was already in it. Oh God, are you OK?" Jane poured out her concern in one big exhale filled with words.

How interesting. Staring at her outpour, Loki quickly discerned that he had not come across such a genuinely and openly displayed concern from anyone, the least in public and not to mention from a relatively complete stranger from another planet. Even his own mother had to exercise dire restraint in front of her husband who was trying way too hard to retain an image of uncompromising supremacy, leaving her to relay her motherly matters through subtle motions of her expressive eyes. And Asgardians, they were usually more concerned for their own safety and well-being when any harm came to the dark prince. Perhaps their fear was not entirely unjustified since he was not exactly impartial to retaliation, but a little concern would not go completely unappreciated. He despised pity, true, but that was miles away from outright caring.

"No harm done," Loki offered, still somewhat in thought, his trademark smile rippling his lips on autopilot. "But do you keep intending to drive into us, or do you have some alternate plans as that would be rather nice?"

"I…I keep getting distracted and you seem to just…be around when that happens," Jane tried to explain apologetically, secretly thankful that they seemed to be so resilient to withstand her destructive distractions, not to mention that in fact they were taking it so exceptionally well overall. She was not usually _that_ lucky getting away with her notorious clumsiness!

"Are you suggesting we are distracting you, Miss Jane?" Thor popped out of the car with his self-confident and planet-lighting grin.

"Well, not exactly," Jane began to consider, probing her memory. "The first time it was a particularly unusual storm I was chasing when driving happened to become a secondary concern, just as right now when somebody happened to have been very rude to me and my friends and ranting in my head about it took precedence over paying attention to random people opening their big doors right in my way."

Ah, how deliciously feisty, even directing the blame at him which was usually the reserved privilege of his own family. He might later even enquire about that rudeness she mentioned as it might prove sufficiently entertaining. "And at the healing facility?" Loki enquired whilst completely ignoring her small accusation, raven eyebrow visiting his forehead in enjoyment of this completely irrelevant debate.

"That was…," Jane stopped herself from saying that she was distracted by looking for them because of the big, swirling reason why she had crashed into them in the first instance but it seemed that feeding more into the already oversized ego shining so dangerously in the blond one's eyes and smile might make him explode and she was not prepared to lose one of her primary witnesses of the phenomenon she was researching just yet. Best admit to the other equally true reason.

"I was reversing. I am not too fond of reversing. I prefer to go forward," Jane elaborated factually.

"Don't we all," Loki agreed with a perfectly curved grin, offering a meaningful side look to his dismembered door.

Getting the hint, Jane quickly offered a reconciliation despite being sure that it had been Loki's fault. But she could hardly yell at her potential tickets to an astronomically large recognition, now could she? And it was his door that got yanked off, her SUV was completely fine. "Well, the least I can do is to offer you the lift you wanted? I was heading that way anyway. I mean, you still want to get to that satellite, don't you?"

"Yes, that would be most kind," Thor instantly accepted, swinging around the dismembered car towards Jane. Could he not at least try to hide his eagerness to please every pretty face he meets, Loki thought? As Loki definitely was more than able to hide his eagerness to throttle Thor or anyone who happened to annoy him on most occasions.

"Perhaps you have forgotten about our own transport?" Loki pointed out that they still had a working means of travel, be it a little less intact than before. Of course he would not reason aloud that he did not want his testosterone loaded brother engaging the only woman who had so far actually managed to hold Loki's ever so preoccupied interest.

However, to Loki's presumed advantage, he also usually paid a little more attention to the all mysterious and inexplicable internal workings of the fairer sex creatures, something Thor did not bother to bother about. He would simply wait, while exuding his mysterious irresistibility from a short distance. Someone her intelligence alone with Thor for even the shortest while would surely soon realize his troll of a brother had no more to offer than two sparkling rows of teeth, an impressive pack of eight abdominal muscles, even more impressive but tiresome hammer with pathetically short handle, free flight for one night and general mental absence? That surely wasn't enough to a woman of her apparent intelligence and spunk now, was it?

"Perhaps you should not have chosen a transport so easily breakable," Thor did not fail to announce haughtily, his impressive chest, one thing Loki forgot to list out, puffing up in a show of superiority. Loki snorted inwardly. Who would fall for that kind of a bodily display? She would never fall for this cocky charade, Loki tried to assure himself.

"I did not think it necessary at the time to make it jackass proof but it appears that I should have," Loki responded with the most pleasant expression he could muster, observing in self-induced discomfort as Jane seemed to be actually observing, to say the least, Thor's overwhelming assets.

Now the only way around this negatively developing situation was to get to the crater first, grab the hammer and then smash Thor's head with it. Or, he could take over this world faster than usual and then order her to stop behaving like a typical woman? No, that would not have been as much fun as a true win over Thor. The battle was afoot.

"Yes you should," Thor did not even catch up to the insult aimed at him, already readying to jump into Jane's oversized means of travel which became him so well. Finally, fate had smiled at him, Thor thought with an absently grinning face. He did not have to feel like being crushed by a giant beast in that small land vehicle his brother had conjured and the view has much improved as well. Her pleasing face was a much better suited companion to his impending reclamation of power and glory. If only Loki didn't…

"Suit yourself, dear brother. I will send you a post card from Asgard when I reclaim Mjolnir in your stead. You may want to roll up your window as I intend to leave enough dust behind to shave off that unkempt stubble on your face," Loki wiggled all five fingers at him in a gesture of a goodbye, the low suspended sun illuminating his face in a brilliant, devilish light.

…if only Loki didn't get there first! Thor felt the strangest, tiniest pang of worry in the depths of his stomach, watching through a mirror that was so handily placed outside of his window as his brother jumped into the door-less car and closed the door that was still there. Well, Thor was no sucker for education but he understood enough to know that the smaller, streamlined vehicle was probably much faster than the rather square thing Jane was driving, plus, well, the fact that Jane was driving was enough a reason for worry.

For a moment Thor was beginning to regret his decision to go with Jane and even willing to take more claustrophobic squashing with a much less enjoyable face next to him when something made him chuckle like a little girl.

He watched Loki still sitting there and going absolutely nowhere, soon hitting the same parts of the car that Thor had before, with a homicidal expression of insulted Frost Giant sprawled across his face. This made Thor's worry flicker away as fast as Loki's magic disappearing act in the midst of a battle. Now all he needed to do was to leave with Jane and the hammer would soon be safely swinging in his mighty hands…

"Did you say that he just hired the car or something?" Seeing Thor looking intently into the rear-view mirror whilst even more intently chuckling, Jane took a peek through the rear window, concern mixing with tingling smile instantly flowing into her brightly sparkling eyes.

"In a manner of speaking, yes," Thor slowly turned to her, his voice pitched disturbingly higher than usual, causing Jane to fight hard to supress her own outburst of laughter. After all, it was not very polite to laugh at your much needed witnesses to a possible Nobel Prize discovery.

"Then maybe he is not quite familiar with the controls? American cars tend to be a lot different from European ones. I should go and help," Jane established as a good as any reason and before Thor could stop her, to his mild chagrin, she had already shouldered open her door and jumped out.

Jane made a dash to Loki's side and knocked on the window, her suspicions being confirmed as the dark-haired brother seemed to need to take a while to figure out how to lower the window, managing to flood the windscreen first together with a good portion of Jane's hair as the wipers entered into the most vigorous mode available. And they thought _she_ was a bad driver?

"Um, you need some help there?" Jane offered, forcing on a kind smile, tucking the wet strand of her hair behind her ear. She would have not minded all that much as in this heat her hair would be nice and dry in no time, but what on earth was that smell?

"This transport refuses to start," Loki partly growled, partly exhaled in a defeated sigh, slowly turning his head to her with eyes that shimmered away like two blue stars lost in the black velvet of space, hypnotizing and inducing of emotions one had never expected to possess.

Being so close to him for the first time, she caught a scent of something otherworldly and enticingly dark, like a dark matter mixed in with the silver sprinkling of a galaxy, but at the same time she could swear that she still smelled petroleum coming from her hair, but what would that do in the windscreen-washing container? Damn that offending odour! Maybe the car had a fuel leak and that's why it wasn't starting?

Jane peeked at the dashboard once she managed to finally force her eyes from the gravity defying pull of his and the flashing red symbol woke her up instantly from the strange but tantalizing moment.

"You are out of gas. Lucky you didn't explode," Jane stated triumphantly, pulling her head back from inside the window, crashing into something superiorly hard behind her.

"Gas? These things are propelled by exploding gas?" Thor asked incredulously from behind Jane. Loki on the other hand had no time to ask anything as he was busy escaping out of the car.

"You have not heard of that? So what do you run your cars on in Norway?" Jane looked genuinely intrigued.

"In our world, we run things on the power of the stars," Thor, backing away from the car, jumped in to explain in his deeply booming yet poetic voice, attempting to elevate his appeal by pretending to actually know what he was talking about. That sneaky little giant bastard, Loki cringed inwardly.

"Ah, you mean that your cars are solar?" Jane pronounced enthusiastically, always in favour of going green, though she could never afford it herself which was quite ironic. Shouldn't saving the planet be cheaper?

"Yes, precisely. Something that cannot easily explode and hinder one's chances at living." _Hence in the same equation as your driving skills_, Loki finished mentally. He really would have said that out loud normally, but rather bizarrely one prolonged look at her sealed his mouth shut. What an odd, disturbing feeling. How could the earthly woman he'd only known for less than a day have the same effect on him as his own mother?

"It's not really that bad. We usually get to smell it before there is any real danger," Jane tried to lessen the impression of death that they seemed to associate with petrol, not quite succeeding by the unconvinced looks on their faces, not to mention that the blonde one, Thor as he called himself, actually scrunched his nose as if he was smelling it.

"Something smells," Thor announced decidedly, sniffing around like a hound picking up a scent.

Strange, Thor hadn't noticed it before, but was that what humans used for hair oils on this planet? That was truly far more appalling to one's senses than a squirt from an Asgardian skunk, and he had never flung his hammer at one ever since that one unfortunate incident. For a split second he contemplated the indignity of walking all that way rather than sharing a confined space with Jane and her offending scent…but, the hammer!

"Really? I don't smell anything, do you Lady Jane?" Loki said in all politeness, his gloved finger dispelling the petrol from her hair. After all, it was more amusing to contradict Thor than to humiliate a human.

"Hmm, not really. But I think the gas from your car might have been leaking. Fortunately, mine runs on diesel. Much safer. Overall," Jane restrained herself from biting her tongue at her little lie, but science was more important than a debate over fuel safety. No one could argue with that.

_I could have sworn…_ Thor looked a bit baffled for an incomputable fraction of a light year, then shrugged at the disappearing stench, deciding instead to concentrate on his hammer. After all, with Mjolnir back in his hands, he could easily fly away from all the smells that any branches of Yggdrasil could ever conjure.

"I do not know what diesel is but if you say it is safe, I believe you," Thor gave no room for more discussion as he lifted his massive self back into Jane's front passenger seat, thus leaving Loki to choose a seat behind him, a self-satisfied grin popping up on his face.

"Right, I take it that you are coming with me then," Jane said as she took her place to drive, watching as Loki silently slinked onto the seat behind them and pensively stared out at the desert. Funny, she did not know them at all but she had already made an observation how in between short moments of gloom Thor always seemed to be happily dreaming of what might happen, while Loki in between moments of mischievous joy always appeared to be gloomily thinking of how to make something happen. Or was she wrong?

Jane shifted into drive and started to pull away from the row of parked cars, worried that her straying thoughts towards the intriguing brothers might yet again cause her to crash somewhere or run someone over, when a smooth, danger promising voice came from behind her ear and pulled her back out from her short, deliberating reverie.

"Who was rude to you and your friends?" Loki asked suddenly with a disarming smile that she spotted in her rear-view mirror yet from the tone of his voice Jane pictured him pulling out a little notebook to write down a hit list for later execution. Well, she would have liked the darn agents to be kind of punished for what they did, but not necessarily brutally tortured or killed, right? _Shake it off Jane, he is no secret spy from Norway._ At least she'd never heard of any such thing…

"Well…," Jane's mind rushing to the moment when her whole life had been ripped out from her hands, she had no problem at all entering into her riled up emotional state which also included imagining quite voluntarily shoving the previously pictured list into Loki's hand's, all complete with the names of the entire S.H.I.E.L.D's agency. "…It was S.H.I.E.L.D. They decided that it was a rather splendid day to waltz into my laboratory unannounced, rip the place apart and steal everything that was ever worth to me. Then, because apparently that wasn't enough, they also stole everything my friends owned and cherished. They made Darcy faithless without her iPod, me without my research notes and Erik without his pants. Well, not that they _actually_ stole his pants but they might as well have…"

"They stole from you?" Thor suddenly turned to her, entering into one of those rare gloomier moments.

"Yes. They stole my life's work without the slightest consideration. They didn't think it appropriate to give me a good reason why and that is why I am going over there now to find out why," Jane continued heatedly, not eve noticing the appreciative glow in Loki's eyes. She had not a clue why she was sharing all this with them, must have been their ready-to-smash-something appearance or did she have too much coffee for breakfast?

Speaking of smashing, what was that darn noise at the back? Did those agent asses actually leave something in her SUV for it to get loose? Jane made a quick peek backward and swerved the car, nearly running off the road as a face popped out from behind Loki's shoulder while not disturbing him at all.

"And they took my socks!" Darcy proclaimed crossly, scrunching her nose in angered expression, looking like she had been there the entire time. Well, technically, she was.

"Darcy?!" Jane threw in a question as well as proclamation of disbelief into her voice. "What do you mean socks?"

"I have written the coordinates to my iPod on them in case I forgot where I have hidden it and they took the iPod and my socks!" Darcy complained, utterly disheartened.

"I will have them thrown off the branches of Yggdrasil," Thor proclaimed with a royal authority, sealing his promise with a gesture of a held out fisted hand, Darcy's sudden appearance never throwing him of his horse.

"And I will throw my other socks at them," Darcy added determinedly, her fisted hand though paling in comparison with Thor's.

"You what?" Jane blinked, not quite familiar with Thor's term as well as reacting to Darcy's mindboggling ridiculousness.

"It's a Norwegian expression. It means…he will ask them not very politely to return your research and Eric's…well, you get the idea," Loki offered to explain from behind Jane, leaning forward with that politely murdering expression again, as Darcy started to scramble over the seat.

"And my iPod!" Darcy emphasized, giving Loki a convincing look from under her glasses as she sat herself next to him, recoiling a little to nearly get a double chin when he turned to her sporting his most casual smirk.

"I do not know an iPod, but I do know a research when I see one as well as pants," Loki told her darky without blinking.

"Yeah," Jane found herself nodding in enthusiastic agreement, yet at the back of her mind she was contemplating swiftly turning the car around and driving in quite the opposite direction while ditching those two, correction – three, somewhere in the desert. What was she doing? And what exactly were those two planning to do when they got there? But the back of her mind was in fact the sensible corner of her mind and hence the very part she never listened to and so her curiosity and desire to get herself in trouble won yet again.

"So did all the iPods like freeze in Norway? Or did all the Trolls eat them?" Darcy attempted to explain the general iPod absence in Norway, only getting Loki's raised eyebrow in turn.

"Polite sure does not work with those government thugs. I had in mind to have a good word with them in a very much impolite manner myself," Jane darkened her voice, surprised at how well it sounded, already planning how she could use it on the agents. With those two as her backup, she might even be able to get them to return her notes, then stomp on their feet and run like hell…

"Are you always this brave and adventurous, Miss Jane?" Thor was back to smiling like they were not at all going to their possibly unexplained disappearance or even death, his own eyes sparkling high and mighty with heroic adventures.

"She never is," Darcy replied speedily, wrinkling her nose in confirmation, pushing up her glasses.

"No," Jane forced on a smile of her own, her mirror catching the shine in Loki's eyes promising the deliverance of mischievous misadventures. Yeah, that was more what she was getting into rather than anything heroic, Jane thought as a worrying doubt tried to crawl under her skin, but it was too late to turn back now, even as the threatening and black as space storm clouds rolled in over the desert sky. Yup, they were so totally screwed.

And because she was totally screwed with everyone, might as well find out if it was worth getting screwed for. "So, who are you exactly? I mean, who are you, really?" Jane secretly bit her cheek, praying to the furthest galaxy and back that she didn't get this wrong. Otherwise, she would have been screwed for nothing, dragging in Darcy as well and that was far worse. She'd have a good word with Darcy later for being as stupid as herself.

"You shall see soon enough," Thor beamed with his usual confidence and determination, breathing in the smell of Asgardian power that rode on the moisture in the air right into his mightily inhaling nostrils.

"Oh, so you will soon turn into your true space forms?" Darcy threw in conversationally.

Jane, on the other hand, was not so easily pleased. That was what she was going to get? She was going to die very soon and she was supposed to _see soon enough_? Over her dead body! Well, not literally… "You promised me answers, remember?" Jane persisted, trying on her newly found dark voice.

"Something like that," Thor gave a laugh at Darcy's surprising intuitiveness whilst admiring Jane's determined eagerness. He had wanted to reveal to her who he was only once he could properly demonstrate his fully blown mightiness, in the form of a massive hammer of course, yet the disapprovingly scowling look on Loki's face spurred him to tell both ladies anything they wanted right there and then.

"What you seek…it is a bridge…," Thor began, overly pleased with himself at sensing the head-shaking, face-palming aura emanating from his darker brother. There was no way Loki could pull Thor away from Jane right now and on Odin's beard, Thor was going take a full advantage of this gigantic advantage.

"A bridge? You mean like an Einstein-Rosen Bridge?" Jane reminded herself to breathe since she was still driving and keeping everyone alive for now, fighting to contain her excitement so that she could also prove them wrong about her driving. Thank goodness though that there were no man sized cacti in the near vicinity or any random people staggering about drunkenly in the desert.

"No, it's more like a rainbow bridge," Thor said with a sparkling smile, otherwise unblinking, and Jane took a moment not to show her tentative disappointment at an answer that could mean one of two things; that Thor was either leading her on or he was even more clinically crazy than Erik had warned her.

"Cool! I know rainbows!" Darcy called out, excited that she thought she knew what they were talking about, looking at Thor who seemed truly pleased with himself.

Loki, on the other hand, inwardly rolled his eyes at Thor's unwavering lack of self-preservation. It was inexplicable how the mortal and easy to kill situation was still somewhat escaping his oafish brother even after all this time. And of course his brawny brother with no time to waste on intellectual pursuits would chose to describe something so splendidly unique and immensely extraordinary with one word, only seeing what it looked like, not what it really was. Loki found himself wanting to jump in and explain his detailed and expert knowledge on the subject when he reminded himself that humans were not yet ready of this precious gift of the universe. Perhaps, he would share it with her later, one day, when he was convinced that this ignorant yet surprisingly eager to learn world could be worthy of Asgardian, and of his of course, knowledge and protection, and one day maybe even ever so benevolent governance.

"Yes, as you can see, my brother enjoys colourful metaphors. It is nothing more, nothing less," Loki said as casually as he could, which in fact came very naturally to him, knowing that any one of them would have to think hard to formulate another question.

"You mean like psychedelics? I've seen a few rainbow bridges of my own, if you know what I mean," Darcy shared her very much scientific experience, though no one seemed inclined to continue the conversation, to Loki's secret delight, also perhaps due to the fact that the transport they were in had run over a hillside and came to an abrupt stop.

Both Jane and Thor leaned forward, Jane with her hands clenching the steering wheel as she took in the sight befallen in front of them. She knew that the agents came this way, but she had never expected them to create a whole darn armoured fortress made out of plastic surgical tubes around this so called satellite. Vehicles, trailers, barricades, lovely razor wire fence, mean looking armed guards and no doubt all her stuff were all dotted around this intricate maze of plastic tubes, all leading to a central translucent cube located exactly in the middle of the crater. Yep, definitely no satellite. This was big, really, really big. So big that her research notes were gone for good, dammit.

Jane quickly reversed, surprisingly without any injury causing incident before they were seen and stashed the car in the dark, just below the top of the crater's edge. As Thor jumped out of the car as fast as a bear smelling food, Jane was on autopilot as if on the verge of a new discovery and reached behind her for her binoculars, instead feeling something warm and soft with her searching hand, finally frozenly realizing that there was in fact a man on her back seat who wasn't normally there.

Truth be told, there were never men in her SUV, at all. Blake never liked her clunky transport, seemingly enjoying more the company of his sports car than hers, and Erik…well, Erik was just Erik, so he didn't count. God, why was Darcy there?

"May I enquire as to what you are searching for?" Loki pronounced in a politely entertained voice, not moving an inch. Of course a guy with a look that could make her shiver in her deepest core would not make it at all easy for her, would he. Darn. Jane swallowed hard.

"Erm, it looks like a long, tubular instrument…?" What? Oh sure, that was the right thing to say. Why couldn't she just say binoculars?

"You mean his…"?

Jane whipped her head back so fast, it caused Darcy to swallow the rest of her most likely inappropriate sentence, to Jane's very short lived relief.

"And did you find it?" Loki didn't flinch apart from his evilly spreading smile, not helping to lessen Jane's utter embarrassment and Darcy's over developed shamelessness at all.

"Nope, not yet," Jane replied, still unable to move and remove her hand. God, could this get any worse? She never touched guys! Well, not exactly never, but her chronic inhibition in the intimacy department had pushed her towards a life in places where she was more likely to meet a rattle snake than a guy which she was also more comfortable touching and that said it all. Maybe that was why Blake had left her, as crudeness and chauvinism sure weren't her things like they were his, the boobs and telescope comparisons from him speaking for itself. And now, a complete stranger was looking at her like she was initiating a sacred place invasion? Oh God, God no.

"Interesting. Then perhaps this might be of use?" Loki reached somewhere without even looking and lifted it up.

Jane retracted her hand from the dark place she was still in denial about touching to snatch the binoculars from his hand and darted out of the car, grateful for the chilled breeze that washed away the burning from her cheeks. She had no idea where her hand had been exactly, but there was no way she was going to ask either him or Darcy.

"I can tell that you've found the right place," the deeply resounding voice came from behind her so suddenly that Jane nearly yelped.

The shiver of shame that run down Jane's spine at that comment was however much more expected, to her bitter grievance. Did the big guy know about that as well when he wasn't even in the car anymore? "What? H-how do you know?" Jane choked out.

"I would say that the extraordinary amount of swarming humans in an otherwise deserted place is a good guiding indication," Thor said with a light chuckle as he looked towards the artificially bright light coming from behind the crater's edge.

"Oh, oh! Yeah, the right place. Sure it is," Jane could literally taste her relief as she landed back in the land of sanity when a sudden whisper in her ear sucked all her calmness back out into space and converted her into a hotly burning supernova.

"Do not look so abashed, Lady Jane, all you had a good feel of was my well-formed thigh," Loki's voice was an incarnation of seduction as he brushed past her, leaving Jane rooted in place like a frozen tree of Jutunheim.

"What is going on with you two?" Thor turned to them, hesitant, uncomprehending frosty smile plastered on his face.

"Absolutely nothing," came from Jane and Loki in unison yet with varying degrees of conviction.

"Jane grabbed his binoculars," Darcy put it out right there, but instead it seemed to put Thor at ease.

"Well then, let us waste no time," Thor proclaimed rather loudly, clapping together his hands. "You stay here Jane. And Darcy. The storm has arrived and soon I am going to add some thunder and lightning." Thor looked up at the blackened sky in expectation, raising one gigantic hand.

"Wow, he's gonna be beamed up to his space ship," Darcy whispered to Jane as she looked up expectantly too.

Jane stared at that for a moment, even forgetting all about Loki.

Thor cleared his throat after a while and shifted uncomfortably when nothing happened. "Well, once I have Mjolnir back. Force of habit. And…you are going to need this." Thor shrugged out of his brown leather jacket that admittedly looked rather good on him in Darcy's experienced opinion, the stream of lights from behind him highlighting the extremely well developed parts of his body exquisitely.

Jane took the jacket in her hand, still observing Thor as if he had just got struck by the said, non-existent lightning, but when the thick rain drops started to pat the dusty desert ground in an increasing rhythm, Jane came back to earth.

"Have you seen what's down there? You still really think you can just walk in, grab…whatever you think is there, and walk out?"

"No," Thor said as if that was the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard.

Jane sighed in relief and Darcy in disappointment.

"I am going to fly out," Thor corrected with an arrogant, testosterone loaded air and before Jane could react in protest he started to head towards the crater, his long blond hair bouncing on his shoulders from his heavy, confident gait.

"Wow." Perplexed, Jane turned to Loki who still stood next to her, his eyes calmly following Thor as if he was just going to fetch some coffee. "Does he suffer from anything? Anything at all?" She really needed to know. After all, Thor didn't seem _that_ crazy before? On a second thought…

"Yes, a lot of things," Loki confirmed her suspicions yet in fact revealing nothing at all. Should she maybe ask for a detailed written list? Maybe she could then read it in jail to remind herself why not to run off with strange crazy guys who were promising her even crazier answers to the craziest discoveries.

"And you? What are you going to do?" Jane asked Loki instead, thinking it might be safer, wishful thinking as it may have been.

"I am going to walk in after him." Loki gave a short bow, his face rising back up to her with a wicked smile. "And fly out first." He then took off his top coat, surprisingly having another one right underneath, and handed it over to Darcy, who had already started to huddle in the rain, having wondered why it had always been Jane who got the free stuff from people. When she turned to Loki to thank him in her proper way though, his black as midnight suit and hair had already vanished into the dark.

"Wow that smells so good. It's like bottled sex from outer space," Darcy exhaled as she detached her face from being smooched into Loki's coat and lifted it expectantly up to Jane. With tentative apprehensiveness, Jane leaned down for a short sniff, and nearly tripped and fell full on into the large bundle of wonderful aromas. Darn, even her supressed and scientifically oppressed female hormones sprung to life at those heavenly scents.

"I wonder how he does it with all those layers he's been wrapped in all day in this stupid desert heat," Darcy said part enthusiastically, part annoyed, wrapping herself inside of her dream of a man-scent. She looked at Jane who looked like she was about to sniff Thor's jacket, though appearing somewhat undecided.

Well, it was unsurprising to say that Jane didn't smell men. At least not deliberately, because she wasn't neither an animal nor Darcy, but ever since that time when she had stuck her head into Loki's car, smelling men has definitely become one of the curiosities she was now more inclined to investigate. So here it went.

Jane buried her nose deep within, smelling kind of a radiant sunshine which was quite nice but then there was also a healthy wallop of fresh manly sweat that made her pull out of there a little faster than she wanted. When she saw Darcy still looking at her expectantly, it was the only thing she could say.

"Well, it's not _that_ bad," Jane elaborated after some consideration. She looked pointedly at Darcy, her eyes sliding to Loki's posh looking coat that Darcy was happily wrapped in, looking like a shrunken grim reaper.

"I'm not swapping," Darcy proclaimed sharply at Jane's demanding look, causing the two to stare at each other for a short while, until Jane shrugged and resigned herself to yet another weird night full of unexpected discoveries, this time in a sweaty man's jacket. But in the end what did it really matter?

What mattered was that very likely she and Darcy were soon going to die. And then probably get arrested, also most likely. And all that wrapped up in strange men's over-garments. Fantastic. Just the thing to add a great boost to her career. Jane scrambled up the edge of the crater in a mad rush of sudden regret and concern, and saw…absolutely nothing. Where were the darn binoculars?

"That's so cool! You should see the big guy's biceps working on those big agent asses!"

Jane looked to the side of her to see Darcy looking through her field equipment and yet again using it to ogle men instead of helping with her research. Jane quickly rolled over and snatched back her inappropriately used equipment, then had a look herself despite Darcy's glaring and puffing protests.

Oh wow, Thor really _did_ work well on those agent asses!

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In the chill of the pitch black air, the wind picked up and began to whip about three tails of a long, elegant coat. The heavy drops of rain pulled down by gravity soon turned to thick lines of water, yet with a subtle wave of his hand, Loki made sure his hair remained immaculately ordered and dry, together with the rest of his exquisite self.

Indeed, he had never argued with his own priorities. Looks first, then image, both that much more easily obtained and maintained by a good wrapping of power. And family, yes, but never before the first three as family was also the most trouble and pain invoking priority. And Thor was the primary source of trouble, though on some occasions, usually those occasions that Loki was actually willing to admit to, Thor also served as a great distraction to boredom.

That was why Loki still had not moved from his chosen spot. Yes, from this distance he could easily teleport straight to Mjolnir but what would be the fun in that? Keeping Thor an encouraging company on his journey to certain failure and then snatching the hammer right from under his big brother's outstretched hand would lend itself to a far more deserving victory.

It would be like taking a candy from a child, or rather like taking a massive pile of roast beast from an even bigger beast that was still alive. Loki had no doubt that the hammer could be his. After all, hadn't he rescued Asgard and hence an entire universe from a certain downfall and ruin by Thor? The only thing Thor was capable of ruling over was a pair of twins, called ignorance and arrogance, which put together spelled an eternal cosmic war. And now, Loki was supposed to just let Thor stroll back to his hammer and then resume his personalized mockery of an ancient coronation ceremony after learning absolutely nothing?

Over his very much alive, and preferably immortal body!

All that said however, Loki had not quite yet had a solid plan, considering that Mjolnir was at this moment the very much unpredictable element and had a metal head of its own, though this was no big feat for the master of improvisation and illusion. But all in good time. First he would get the kicks out of observing Thor in his unnatural state and environment as that would not be something he could easily see ever again. Well, then again, perhaps seeing Thor springing recklessly into a horde of local inhabitants of a random planet without thinking was not all that rare in the first instance.

In a way it was like reliving the splendidness of the Jotunheim fiasco all over again as Loki watched Thor walk into the human base like he owned the place and started punching everything unfortunate that managed to get in his way. He had to hand it to Thor though. Even without Mjolnir or Asgardian powers, Thor was a force in its own league, only shame the same could not have been said about his intelligence which in fact didn't even have a league at all.

Loki shook his head as he saw Thor grab the shooting end of a long weapon to yank it from the hands of one human and then ram the part one is actually supposed to hold into the man's jaw, then toss the very much usable weapon aside. What a terrible waste. Did his beast of a brother still believe he was immortal?

No matter how much fun it was to observe however, there was still a point beyond which Loki would not simply remain in the shadows. And the point jumped out when Thor had gotten spotted by the whole now swarming and shouting establishment, which was not at all surprising really, given he had slept through all the lessons in subtlety and delicacy.

So with a cunning grin on his face, Loki decided it was time to lend Thor a bit of a hand.

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_Please leave a review? I love to hear from you what you think and what you liked! I added Darcy in this chapter after I wrote it, as I thought you might like it. But did you? OK, see you next time! And thanks all for the R&amp;R!_


	6. May the mortal throw something

_I just want to first thank so much to Redgrave, Britt601, ena, DarkFay, Mrs. Marple Poirot, Guest, Queen Amaryllis Kay, mfaerie32, Ribke D'Crazy, CrazedLoki, XLil MEkoX, guminola, Lokigurl, miemae04, Joy915, Lokabrenna, thephoenixandthedragon4ever, IloveStBerry, Night Companion, analise17 and ProperEnglish for all your wonderful reviews! I could not have continued without any of you! Your reviews mean so much to me and they bring out the spring in my motivation. Please don't abandon me, I would be so sad to stop writing this, but I need all the help I can get from all of you. Also thanks to everyone for just reading, favoriting and all sorts, you give me the will to keep going. And if you stay with me, I will do my utmost best to finish this!_

**CH6 – May the mortal throw something**

_What on Midgard?_ Thor peered perplexed upon the wood and metal stick that had been dropped to the ground after he had slugged a human across his face with utter satisfaction, wondering what use these puny things were that humans seemed to have donned as some kind of weapons. The staff-like object possessed neither a good bulk for smashing, nor a sharp edge for slicing, and surely trying to throw such an unbalanced clunky thing would ensure more of a hit on the surrounding scenery or even the outer space rather than on the intended opponent.

In the meantime, the Midgardians seemed to have decided to flood the place with lights that could have blinded a sightless burrowing creature of Vanaheim, as if it had not been lit up enough already, and the loud, piercing sound that was coming out of a peculiar unmoving bell would no doubt be heard on Asgard in a hundred years' time.

He should make haste to reintroduce himself to Mjolnir and then smash this little human festival of unworthy wannabes in the strangest plastic-looking costumes he had ever seen back to where they came from. How dared they, and how absurd! Did they not know that only he was worthy of the hammer? Did they not realize that no other was mightier than he? A sudden but unsurprising urge to throw something truly overwhelmed Thor at that very moment and the enraged brute grabbed hold of the said pitiful stick laying on the muddy ground. Hidden behind a vehicle taller than he, Thor flipped the rifle in the air like a toothpick Volstagg would have used to clean his teeth after a great feast and hurled it at the offending metal transport that was trying to burn off his suntan by shining the brightest of lights right into his arrogantly grinning face.

A deep, satisfied, rock-cracking chuckle escaped past Thor's curling lips as the metal part of the stick actually and against all nature managed to smash straight into the spotlight, instantly neutralizing the cosmic stream of blinding particles coming out of it, glass and debris flying into the raging night.

"Ah, so throwing works", Thor appraised the precariously well rotating stick out loud with an impressed shine that danced like the flicker of the brightest stars in his eyes. He could start to smell the power of Mjolnir that charged the surrounding air just as a mighty bolt of lightning cracked through the blackened sky.

"Well, you _would_ think that everything is made for throwing," Loki's sarcasm appeared right next to Thor, aloof expression gracing Loki's face, his fingers clasped nonchalantly together behind his back.

Loki had thought it wise to render himself invisible except to Thor to safeguard his hard-earned image for a number of reasons he could not be bothered to count. Well, for instance, fighting with Thor in his delusional human capacity could not have yielded anything spectacular, it was becoming rather muddy and hence unsatisfactorily unpleasant, and not last, the obtainability of Mjolnir still begged some conviction. Truthfully, yes, Loki could easily feel himself worthy of its power but he might as easily not. And should the latter transpire, as he was not as naïve and narrow-minded as his eager to be led to a hopeless situation brother, no one would be able to see his failure this way, be it this bunch of too nosy for their own good mortals or the supernaturally nosy for Loki's own good Heimdall.

And Loki wasn't delusional in the slightest not to expect that Heimdall's galactic eye knew everything they got up to, and hence that the king the enigmatic gatekeeper was sworn to obey and spy for would also know. And no doubt at all, the Allfather would have been excessively proud to see his two only heirs running around Midgard like two starving Asgardian goats chasing after a prized whimsical cabbage that was in fact coated in gold and hence completely inedible. Rightly, Loki could just picture Odin bursting into an unstoppable laughter at their pitiful efforts, yet then again, since when did the Allfather actually ever laugh? Perhaps Loki could throw in a few amusing moments to prolong his father's diminishing health? After all, father needed to loosen up a little after all that effort he had expended to banish them both across so many galaxies.

"Of course, Loki. How else is the next king of Asgard meant to fight?" Thor appeared so impressed with his throw, he could have flown out of there even without the help of Mjolnir.

"With cunning, magic and knives, would be my best guess," Loki said matter-of-factly, rocking on his otherwise invisibly rendered feet.

It took a while for the jibe to settle in Thor's obstructed mind, but the frozen, smiling stare Loki was belatedly adorned with was truly priceless, as if all the delusion had darted away from Thor like his precious hammer and the gift of lucid deduction has finally settled in its place. For all three seconds.

Thor gave a contemptuous laugh in his booming voice. "Indeed, dear brother, I do appreciate your continuous motivation for me to best you in all the ways I can," Thor expanded his chest, making himself even taller than the enormous six and a half feet he already was. Hence, still very much delusional.

"And how do you intend to best me exactly? Do you propose to fight the remaining hundred or so humans by flinging their own firearms into their faces? And would that be one by one or all at once?" Loki leaned an inch closer to Thor, interested to hear his big master plan.

"Truth be told, besting you is as easy a feat as convincing Volstagg to eat food at a feast. If you must know, I will simply walk into that tunnel over there which will lead me all the way to Mjolnir. And what of you, brother? Perhaps you had in mind scaring all the humans to death with your invisible little knives?"

Instead of rolling his eyes, royally, Loki decided to go for an irritated squeeze of his lips for a change. Enough was enough. He was about to retort with a very much educational repartee, when his eyes wandered to the car that Thor had maimed with his mighty throw, the said vehicle now speeding downwards uncontrollably as it had bounced off the crater's edge, now on a trajectory towards the web-like structure built around the mythical hammer.

The mortal Gods both watched as the ex-light bearing transport veered off its high-speed path after its driver had jumped out of the out of control car, causing it to hammer it down straight past a generous group of heavily armed humans who stood near a part of the tube exposed to the night.

The guarding men stared ahead sternly in trained apathy which promptly transformed to disbelief as they followed the car with their eyes before panicked expressions sprouted on their faces as realization seemed to have hit home. Faster than Fandral rushing to a pretty lady they abandoned their posts to give chase to the runaway human transport as if they could stop it from smashing right into the structure and shower the place with colourful sparks like cheerful bifrost on a vacation. Ah, too late.

"See? I told you I would simply walk inside…" Thor bragged as he commenced marching out from behind the cover of the roofless jeep towards the now unguarded entrance and instantly gained the ability of a backward flight when he got hit hard by a fast driven transport that zoomed it past from the other side.

"You were saying?" Loki bent down to observe Thor flailing on the muddy ground a few mighty paces away from him, seemingly having lost the bearing as to what was up and what was down.

"Jane?!" Thor billowed out in his thunder resembling voice just as a real thunder cracked the sky in half as if to amplify his angered state.

"No. Strangely, not this time," Loki deduced calmly from the way the car had turned around so swiftly and accurately, hence the driver was highly trained and skilled in driving, and therefore definitely not Jane. Well, at least there was still hope for the human race after all, if they were not destined to exterminate each other with bad driving.

There was not much hope left for Thor however as he was still very much dazedly stumbling on the spot as if he had just wandered off at the end of an Asgardian party, which was never anywhere close to sober, and shot himself accidentally off to a deserted realm, loudly pondering where in the cosmos he was and where his hammer got to…

And…Thor did not disappoint. "Hammer?! Hammer?!" The big guy demanded louder than Volstagg's belch to the pouring wet heavens, no attention paid to the large beast of a car that had him now in its sparkling bright sights, readying to rush out at his stupefied oaf of a giant brother and whisk him to the happy and pretentious glory of Valhalla.

Loki sighed, hard. This was one of those not so uncommon moments where he would save the day and yet again no one would see anything at all. Perhaps he should be resorting to less magic after all? But what would be the fun in that? Indeed, it would have been more entertaining to see Thor learn his faults the hard way, yet the mere thought of his annoyance of a dearest brother dead sent a shiver much colder than the winds of Jotunheim down Loki's invisible spine. And just like Jotunheim itself, that was a cold he was not prepared to endure.

So reserving changing his mind for another time, Loki teleported himself right next to the human driver and seated himself in the empty passenger seat, another story of his life and the more reason for a much needed sanity boosting entertainment. After all, boredom was just as bad as ignorance since both had the great tendency to produce something absurdly stupid. Only Loki was the master of conquering boredom and denying ignorance, and therefore if he had ever done anything stupid which was rather rare, it was usually from some form of inexplicable manifestation of destructive feelings…like those for his amazingly still alive and breathing brother.

So, holding that thought, Loki leaned close to the man's face. The mortal henchman was so concentrated on running down Thor with his instrument scarily too similar to Jane's, startling the guy was going to be a child's play. If only the human didn't smell so badly from some kind of a nose-wrinkle-worthy smoke, as if he had rolled himself in Svartalfheimien puddle of tar and afterwards set himself on fire, for some reason actually inexplicably surviving. Well, at least this would not take too long…

"I do hope this doesn't run on gas as I truly don't enjoy exploding," Loki breathed like a ghost into the human's ear, enjoying the view of the man's universally baffled face that snapped to the space next to him occupied by nothing.

The guy did not even finish swearing to Helheim before he swerved the thing on four wheels and managed to overturn it on its side, missing Thor by the short length of Mjolnir's handle before colliding it with the maze of tunnels on the opposite side of the first collision for a good balance.

Loki, of course, was already back beside Thor, admiring how his brother snapped back into a battle stance, looking for something to throw upon hearing the explosion and the salve of sparks that the second crash had created.

"Here, would this help?" Loki asked Thor simply as he handed him no less than Mjolnir itself.

Truth be told, Loki had expected some interesting face on Thor at that very moment, but the wicked smile that sprung up amongst the blonde stubble was so sizeable, it would dazzle the ice right off a gigantic Jotunheim beast in hibernation.

"Is this…is it what I think it is…?" Thor held it in front of him in utter disbelief, straining hard not to kiss it.

"Well, evidently it decided to finally silence all that excessive noise you were making earlier. After all, only you are truly worthy with a voice as mighty as yours." Loki commended Thor with a small pat on the shoulder, his hidden smirk of pure pleasurable satisfaction could scare the whole race of dark elves back into their underground caves.

Thor though suddenly did not look so enthusiastic anymore. "You held it."

Damn. "Did I?"

"Loki! I am going to make you sit on your own helmet once I have the real hammer!" Thor bellowed out in a pent up longing for his massive tool of destruction, throwing the fake hammer at Loki who had meantime backed away in a scarily instinctual sense of self-preservation. The thrown not-Mjolnir held some promise of actually flying for a very short momentum, before it plopped to the mud unceremoniously a foot short of Loki's booted foot.

"Much more delightful than sitting on yours and being tickled to death by feathers," Loki grinned sincerely.

Thor was about to throw back something insulting instead of physical this time, but hammer throwing hijacked his thoughts way too much, causing him to contemplate on the fact that hammer throwing was not as easy as it should be anymore, and hence he should do something about it fast. Speaking of which, why did Mjolnir not come to him? He better go and remind it who he was.

"The handle was even shorter than usual. It threw my throw off balance," Thor quickly assured himself as an excuse in guise of his mildly felt embarrassment.

"If you say so," Loki mouthed amusedly after the big guy, watching as Thor sprinted in a sudden hurry towards the tunnel's entrance that was now completely devoid of human presence, the said humans busy attending to the two crashes that had ripped new decorative holes in their intricate palace of plastic tubing. Speaking of a palace, truly, their sense of aesthetic appeal was rather appalling. What passed for a structure anyone was supposed to live in even for the shortest of times would send even Asgardian rats out screaming. Have they never heard of gold?

And perhaps it sent the humans out screaming as well, as two of them just happened to do that, two big, mean as Helheim guards who rounded the corner utilizing the same time and speed as Thor, causing nearly an astronomical collision with a bone-shattering force like three hormone driven Bilchsteim fighting for a female in heat.

Loki could literally hear the pain-inducing thud that made him shudder inwardly at the agony Thor surely must have been experiencing, the rolling and blinking of his brother's blue eyes a clear indication of his deep but temporary discomfort.

Yet it wouldn't be his bull-headed brother if that didn't in fact charge him up for more. No, his brother had no sense at all, always letting a hammer make all his decisions, and in the absence of a hammer, there was a thundering cloud of testosterone to take up its place.

So, Thor, his head still thudding from the impact, gave out a suitable war cry prior to him smashing his own forehead against those of the two large human men, no doubt thinking that there was no room for more maleness in that constricted plastic definition of inadequacy apart from his own.

And as it goes, to Loki's continuous mild grievance, it worked. Having successfully head-butted them to the ground Thor then charged through the worm-like corridor like the victorious Bilchsteim eager to claim its prize, mowing down, tackling and punching humans of all shapes and sizes, left and right. There was nothing that would stop him, nothing at all, not until he got to the centre of this maze of the mortals and reclaimed what he insisted was his by his own right.

If only this damned human form was not slowing him down! Thor began to feel fatigue and muscle wear he had not felt before, and all that after taking down only about twenty five men! He was truly getting annoyed with this inhuman intolerability, not to mention the added nuisance of his brother who had been trailing after him as if he was on an evening stroll through their mother's freshly manicured gardens, without landing a single hit on anything, only providing an unwelcomed verbal commentary on Thor's valiant efforts and thus serving to fuel his close to erupting storm of all frustrations and impatient irritation.

And it finally erupted…

Thor snapped his head to Loki, his sizeable body following fast in an impressive one eighty turn. The tentatively dumbfounded look on Loki's face at that very moment was ever so nearly consoling. But not near enough.

"Brother! Should you feel the need for usefulness, either stop this nonsense or become an Yggdrasil and leaf!"

Loki stood there with an unreadable expression for a short moment before unperturbed he gestured somewhere behind Thor. "You might want to…"

"What now!" Thor exhaled exasperatedly, then realized his tiny omission and swiftly like a very large whirl of wind dodged the guard who was coming at him from behind like a giant stony beast, causing the guy to instead smash into Loki, leaving the God of All-things-annoying and the human beast to reel to the ground in a tangled, half-invisible heap of merino wool and S.H.I.E.L.D.'s armoured Kevlar.

The bulky, ape-like agent blinked a few times, trying to figure out what exactly he had smashed into when his intended target was still standing behind him, instead grabbing something scarily soft and unnaturally cushy in his hand. The agent's face scrunched in rage at this violating degradation of his tough-guy status and started to punch at the imaginary softness that presented itself in the empty air in front of him.

Thor, on the other hand, felt suddenly so much better. Laughing came so naturally at seeing Loki's utter surprise when the ugly man's big fist landed square in his perfect face and began to redecorate his up to now perfectly maintained visage. He would even let Loki hold Mjolnir with the help of Thor's hand for whole five seconds to see that look on him again.

Thor's openly rendered show of mockery though was more than enough for Loki to rapidly recover. In fact, the dark prince had never felt more like sending Thor's face beyond the current expanse of cosmos for some ice field exfoliation than at that very moment.

Magic power streaming into his body on its own volition, Loki arched himself back and kicked up a wave of air at the exuberantly violent man who was still trying hard to remould his face, sending him flying out through the roof of the plastic tunnel and close but no way far enough into space. He then instantly leapt for Thor and tackled him to the metal walkway, holding his hands to Thor's sizeable neck, all quaking and ready to squeeze out some arrogant air.

"I have been no other than supportive, understanding and patient with you ever since you had us landed in this ridiculous folly, or in fact ever since I was born. But you, you take nothing seriously, you see nothing and you learn nothing. All you want is your precious hammer and the throne and you don't care who suffers whilst you get what you want!" Loki could not believe the words of actual sincerity coming from his mouth for once but it was as if some magic door opened and it all came pouring out.

He had lived obediently in Thor's too large to fill shadow and he had been content enough to do so, yet for some reason in this particular moment it had become too long since he had waited for some acknowledgement, a nod or even a little thank you from Thor. Perhaps it had been the sudden disappointing possibility that things could have soon go back to where they were without any change or the fact that they were in each other's sole company for longer than was healthy. But the true reason did not really matter as what needed to be said had now been said and it was too late to think of a plan to avoid the consequences.

"This is not the time to be resolving two thousand years of pent-up slights," Thor sent Loki's hair flying with his naturally booming voice as he grabbed hold of Loki's wrists and flipped him over onto his back.

"This is as good time as any!" Loki protested ever so louder as well, trying in vain to kick Thor off, his magical energy temporarily depleted.

"Not when Mjolnir is so close to my reach!" Thor tried to knock some sense into Loki by pounding his shoulders into the floor, deciding to go for his face when it wasn't working.

"Precisely my point!" Loki would have resorted to displaying a fully angered face as Thor had not listened to a word he had said, for the umpteenth time, but his face was now being squashed down into the floor and so he couldn't.

"You always envied me my hammer! And don't think I don't know you were behind its shortened handle!" The punch Thor delivered across Loki's jaw only resulted in a knee shoved hard into his gut.

"Evidently, I should have made it much shorter! In fact, my disappointment that it was still fit for throwing was endlessly boundless!"

Thor gave a light, cocky chuckle whilst fending off Loki's elbow that had a near rendezvous with his stubbly cheek. "You forget that I can throw anything, no matter how short the handle," Thor's hard voice dropped to a boomingly amused tone, though his heart now thumped wildly with all that fighting and potentially, though deniably, from the fact that for the first time, his brother's words might have actually struck some chord inside of him he didn't know he had. Too bad that it made him even madder.

"Have you not ever considered that perhaps that might be your biggest flaw?" Loki gave him a doubtful look as he too ceased his efforts to kick the mighty hammer out of Thor, metaphorically.

"What. Throwing? No," Thor said confidently, back to grinning off his sparkling teeth. ""I never considered it," he added full-heartedly and truthfully.

Loki sighed. Hard. He would see the Allfather grinning like a goblin and skipping ropes together with his ravens on his golden throne before Thor would change. Therefore Loki's destiny was to forever creep in the shadow of a hammer-wielding idiot, an incarnation of an arrogant knucklehead, and fix his blunders with no appreciation for his esoteric heroic deeds. Luck was never Loki's best quality. But he would as Helheim make up for it with trying.

"Not all can be simply thrown and you certainly cannot throw all your faults away!" Loki snapped at Thor, attempting to flip his way too heavy brother off of him.

"Oh, really? I can even throw you and you have no handles at all!"

"Oh, do try!" Loki's eyes begged him, daringly.

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"What's happening now?" Coulson, the high-ranking agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. in a perfectly ironed suit, had meantime abandoned his station by the haywire monitors, and headed towards the tunnels, talking on the radio to agent Barton.

Barton shifted one eye from the scope, all perched above the suspected extra-terrestrial find like a hawk with a high-powered rifle aimed at the brawny maniac who had been skilfully dispatching the entire populace of the not anymore secret establishment.

"He's…now fighting with himself, sir," the agent announced deadpan, his voice politely formal.

"And why on earth would he do that?" Coulson enquired, somewhat puzzled.

"My guess would be that he run out of other guys to fight with, sir," Barton concluded informatively, his voice as steady as the unmovable alien object sparking up electricity below him.

Coulson stared at the radio at that for a while before replying. "Then, should I send him some more?"

"To beat up? Great plan, sir."

"Thank you. But…in case we have no one else, do you have a clear shot?" Coulson wanted to check but only a crackling of static came back from the radio in response.

"Barton? Agent Barton?! Do you copy?"

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Well, this was rather unexpected. Thor was still undoubtingly strong, but how was this possible? Loki pondered wonderingly whether he could in fact land back on Asgard as he had found himself flying up high, looking back down at Thor's face that was smug with a very much annoying 'I told you so' satisfaction. Yes, Loki's saving grace at that very moment was the pure thought of leaving his brute of a brother stranded on Midgard whist he'd float endlessly through space which was eons more appealing than watching Thor gloat about his greatly overrated, short-handled, extremely fastidious hammer yet again.

But it was not to be as Loki's ponderous moment was cut short and instead his entire body was slammed against something still decidedly on Midgard, from the human-like swearing his hard-felt landing had received in turn. Perhaps he could throw the said something back at Thor to teach his brother that the art of throwing could go both ways?

But when Loki turned his hurting head to have a look at what he had hit, after doing a now much practiced healing number on his bruised insides for what felt like the millionth time on this planet, he had gotten a much more interesting idea…

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That was weird.

He as Hell didn't see that one coming at all. In fact, he was still seeing nothing as he looked up at the now empty nest he had been so inexplicably thrown out of. Dangling down with one hand clutching his rifle at the ready and pointed at the nothing that had hit him, the other hand's fingers wrapped around the edge of the crane's frame to hold on, Barton speculated with the knowledge of his extensive training what could have dislodged him off his impeccable balance.

After some consideration that had nothing to do with actual science he was satisfied to deduce that it was most likely some magnetic flare shot out of that weird as Hell sledgehammer stuck in that piece of stinking space rock down below. The weird hammer was probably complaining that its handle got hacked in half in the undoubtedly very impactful fall from outer space.

Well, what else could it have been? He would never lose balance on his own and he'd certainly not get knocked out by some stupid storm that was raging so unimpressively all around them. No doubt the scientific idiots at S.H.I.E.L.D. had no idea what they were doing as it had been the norm and poked at that thing one time too many with something they definitely shouldn't. To be honest, they might as well have brought tweezers to try and lift that thing as all those instruments they had beeping at the thing sure weren't doing any good either.

They always messed around with all things strange and alien, causing stuff to explode or turn already mildly mutated people into some psychos in dire need of a life-long therapy, and they called themselves the S.H.I.E.L.D? Like darn Hell, _he_ was the S.H.I.E.L.D's shield! Keeping a keen eye on anything that could possibly mess up their spare of the moment guess work; maniacs, the said turned psychos and mutants or the stuff that was exploding, name the lot. And he had been expertly putting a short end to all those threats while all they did was…cause him to lose his balance. He never lost balance! Dammit!

Barton completed his mental rant in a record time of about three seconds before he assured himself that there was indeed no one there and pulled himself back into his eagle's nest with one muscular arm, when he froze in a sudden feeling of sheer panic that he was missing something, something incredibly important…

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Thor looked back down from Loki's unimpressed eyes, unable to be happier at his impressive throw of his tall, not what one could call light or easily handled brother.

"And now, I am going to get Mjolnir," the God of Thunder exuded his old self-assurance as if their fight had never happened. After all, how could his proud, royal upbringing ever admit that he could possibly be the one at fault?

He turned around to finally take a step towards the proof of his ultimate brilliance and power, almost ready to reach out and grab it with his eyes burning, when a giant fist landed across his jaw and sent him reeling to the floor. Splayed out on his back and seeing Loki's face spinning high above him, Thor could not deny the very strong need to smash the face in of whoever had the audacity to keep him away from regaining the right to his ultimate might.

After all, what more did he have to prove? What had the Allfather in mind for him to do or learn? Surely he had shown already that he was worthy, and that he could fight even without the help of a mythical weapon and punch these humans endlessly as if Mjolnir had lived in his hand itself? Was it not enough? How many more mortals did he yet have to humiliate and ridicule to prove to father once and for all that he was the mightiest of them all?

Or was this the final test set upon him, no doubt the most challenging last opponent who stood between him and the ready to be reclaimed power of Thor?

"You are big," Thor admitted with a huge smile tugging at his sculpted lips whilst he sat up and stared the biggest human he had seen right in the eye. So this was supposed to be the final trial of his ultimate worth? How laughable. This was going to be a walk in Vanaheim's green forest that had been trimmed daily and paved for the elderly Vanir too frail to afford the smallest misstep, Thor thought arrogantly as he grinned up at the human giant.

"Fought bigger," the blonde God did not omit to boast as he was already tasting victory on his slightly torn lower lip. He slowly wiped the blood from his mouth without a single flinch before he sprung up and tackled the guy faster than either of them could blink, the combined weight of them crashing them through the tunnel wall like it was a sheet of paper and right into the lashing rain and muddy slope outside.

"This will not take long," Thor said cockily to the silent giant as he skidded down the slope with mud across his face, his smile appearing like he had just eaten an Asgardian mutton stew whilst omitting to flush it down with a tankard of ale.

The God of Lightning thought he was going to be fast when he planned to ram his feet into the guy's chest while he had the up-the-hill advantage, but to his surprise, the huge mortal bent down in front of him with an unexpected speed, causing Thor instead to jump on the man's substantial back and skid down it like a Frost Giant on a sled.

Angered at his failure and landing with his Godly backside an inch deep in the mud, Thor whipped around in an instant with rain and droplets of blood detaching from his dirty face, the impetuous smirk he could imagine on Loki at that very moment driving his sense of righteous brutality insane. He would not be defeated by a mere human. He would not be defeated by anyone, especially not when his brother and his father were watching from up high, one with unreserved enjoyment and the other with reserved disappointment.

"All right, maybe a little longer," Thor growled in a low rumble at the overgrown agent before he stood up from the ground, the rain and mud pouring down in ribbons from his dirtied face and long, messed up hair. In that one momentous moment he recalled all the tireless training he had ever done, all the glorious battles he had fought and all the strategic wisdom his father had ever drilled into him as he stood there in the rain, with aching muscles and heavy breath, in front of the giant human who would have one day gone to Valhalla for he was a warrior worthy of such a great honour.

He'd have to be cunning, and fast, and exercise the best moves and tactics he had ever done and learned, but then again, that would take way too long. Thor gave his trademark grin of pure, unadulterated cockiness as he stepped forth to the huge man and punched him with all he had into his lower gut.

There, who needed millennia of training and advice when simplicity won every time? Now he truly hoped that Loki and Odin had been both observing closely and learnt something from Thor's highly effective ways. Staggering in the mud from the mighty punch, Thor watched with a triumphant shine on his face as the giant toppled to the ground and wasn't coming back up again.

"I told you it wouldn't take long." Thor looked up at the sky victoriously, whipping his head ostentatiously to shake off the excess water from his hair, then afforded a smug glance towards Loki who somewhat inexplicably sat grinning instead of staring sulkily in the face of Thor's triumph, high above in…what was that thing? It appeared in likeness to a trash basket for catching whatever refuse fell from outer space and it happened to catch his brother. Now, wasn't that quite fitting?

Excitement gripping his insides at his unchallenged might, ready to do war with the entire universe if he truly had to, and to shove his victory in Loki's annoyingly smug face, the big guy turned to the outer plastic wall that surrounded the central cube and ripped it open with his bare hands. Thor stepped inside to finally stand face to face with the only thing he thought made him who he was, electric currents swirling in greeting through his veins. He felt the power rise from Mjolnir at his Godly approach, the runes flaring up on the sacred metal of Uru with bright lights of gold and silver, beckoning to Thor with powerful lightning summoned from the churning skies above.

Absolute certainty of the final moment of his unbecoming mortality accompanied Thor's slow approach to reclaiming his birth right, his bulging arm arching to grip the handle, tingles of raw energy slipping into the tips of his strong as bull fingers.

Thor closed his eyes in anticipation and lifted his chin for this historical moment, letting his large hand wrap itself around the object of his wildest dreams and desires…an object made of…soft cotton!?

Lokiiii! Thor's eyes snapped open in a wide arrangement of blue and white and in an instant landed with a mortified refusal on what his hand was actually gripping.

His hand let go so fast Thor didn't know what to do with it for a few seconds, finally ending up wiping it vigorously into his muddied jeans, feeling as though he had just touched the bottom of an Asgardian skunk, something he had had the misfortune to experience only once in his very long life and had no desire to repeat it again. He was going to kill his brother this time, he was actually going to kill him for real and not as an empty threat in jest. If only he could get his hands on him now…

"You didn't actually think I would let you try it first, did you?"

The sudden voice of Loki so close to his ear made Thor on impulse instantly reach for Mjolnir again when he remembered just in time that there were someone's undergarments wrapped around its handle, on top of it all visibly worn. And who in the glory of Valhalla would be comfortable enough to wear this abomination to the male species? Thor looked again, somewhat closer against his best judgement to see whether it could in fact belong to a woman instead, briskly dismissing the idea at seeing what looked like a baby version of a very hairy Bilchsteim staring back at him from the frontal centre of the thing, surrounded by a joyful sprinkling of red dots in a scarily familiar pattern.

"How dare you desecrate a mighty a weapon as this with this…with such unworthy earthly undergarments!"

"Ah, my sincere apologies. Allow me to remediate this inexcusable indiscretion of mine," Loki proclaimed with an apologetic incline of his head and with a discrete wave of his hand the boxers vanished from Mjolnir's handle. Thor nodded in somewhat tentative thankfulness; knowing he might have been premature which proved justified a second before the festive pants landed over Thor's smiling face and dishevelled head.

"I believe this is a more suitable arrangement," Loki said amusedly with a matching grin, quick to evade Thor as his hand flung itself at Loki's face before attempting to shake off the offending garment, flailing about as if he stood in the midst of an angry nest of Asgardian bees.

Now it was time to take advantage of his brother's well-timed preoccupation, Loki discerned with a happy glee as he placed his hand over the handle of the legendary hammer, inhaling a brief breath of air to take in the feel of something he had wanted to do for so long in his life. Shame that his moment of secret truth was made a little too short lived by Thor's annoyingly speedy ability to fend off Midgardian objects, a giant hand too soon griping the hammer over Loki's own.

"I'll show you a more suitable arrangement," Thor bellowed out in his staggeringly deep voice, blue eyes flashing with the wrath of a great consequential battle as he tried to shoulder Loki away in vain.

"What arrangement. You holding my hand?" Loki rejoiced as he enjoyed himself more than ever while he refused to budge, now pulling hard at the handle with both of his hands while using his back side to try and shove Thor aside.

"No, you idiot. The hammer. Only my hand can hold it, so admit defeat now and remove yourself from my hammer!" Thor fought back, wrestling with Loki over Mjolnir with both hands pushing and grappling both Loki and the handle in turn.

"What, afraid I might actually take it?" Loki's sarcasm was unleashed in his voice, reaching newly discovered heights.

"You can never take it!"

"What, the hammer or the throne?" Loki taunted.

"Neither!" Thor was livid.

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"Barton!" Coulson barked into the radio, wondering if the agent fell asleep in that favourite eagle's nest of his. He was spending way too much time in those high up places and who knew what he was doing up there, probably using it to catch up on sleep. But how could he sleep with this racket going on?

"Sorry, sir," came back hastily from the receiver, some rustling and mild swearing followed before Barton composed himself again. "I seemed to have lost…never mind."

"Glad you are back, Clint. Having a different perspective from up there, I need your take on the situation. What do you make of it? Mental patient?" Coulson asked, watching as the situation developing at the alien artefact seemed to have taken an unexpected turn. He would have thought the big guy wanted to try his luck at lifting the thing but what on earth was he doing? Practising his terrible dancing moves?

"From up here, it more looks like a highly trained form of PTSD, sir," Barton suggested firmly.

"Seems more like a PTAD to me," Coulson re-evaluated thoughtfully.

"PTAD, sir?"

"Post traumatic arrogance disorder, agent Barton. Something you should be familiar with."

"Me?"

"Yes. It's something Stark suffers from but without the initial trauma," Coulson elaborated simply, not having to think on it too much.

"Yes, sir. Although I do prefer this guy. He does not need a piece of metal to beat everyone up."

"I don't know Clint, I don't know. Something tells me that this guy wants the metal more than Stark does."

Considering that for a second, Barton spared an inspiring thought to Tony Stark. "Should I eliminate him, sir?"

Coulson stared pensively at Thor. Being in the field with nearly the highest security clearance, he had seen things other mere humans could only have nightmares about. And this object, they all had tried to lift it, with bare hands or heavy machinery, it made no difference, even used high-tech equipment to try and decipher its secrets yet it remained unmoving, dark and cold. And now, it had sparked to life as if it had been greeting this guy that just happened to waltz right in like an oversized ballroom dancer and it was all for his taking. This was no ordinary man.

Coulson knew that at this very moment his decision could be very important, and right in a time when the security of the entire planet was in question and of the utmost priority.

He didn't take his eyes of the stranger as he announced steadfast in his calm, professional manner. "No. I want to see what he does." Coulson moved his mouth away from the radio but then slowly, moved it back in again. "There is one thing you can do for me though."

…

"Tell me…why is the Velcro of your underpants stuck to his hair?"

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_A/N: Before you ask how Coulson recognises Barton's underpants, let's just say that Natasha gave them to him as a joke for Xmas during an all Avenger party. Yup, they have all seen it and the very cute reindeer on them. Hope you enjoyed! And a Happy New Year!_


End file.
